Students happy with temporary classrooms

Ramechhap, August 31

The concrete buildings of Patanadevi Lower Secondary School in Ramechhap municipality had collapsed due to the April 25 earthquake, but now children of the school are happy to be able to study in temporary classrooms made of bamboo.

The students now feel safe though the disaster is still fresh in their minds.

Remembering that fateful day, Nikita Lama, a student said, “We are safe and do not have any psychological fear of the tremor while taking classes.”

Students had run away from their classrooms when the April 25 tremor occurred.

The children, who are taking classes in the temporary class rooms, said they were lucky as they were safe inside the class rooms and had no fear of aftershocks.

“Other students from the concrete buildings will run in panic when an earthquake occurs, but we will watch the scene,” Nikita, a schoolgirl said, adding that there was no fear of tremor in the temporary classrooms.

Meanwhile, head teacher Mohan Shrestha said that the school would have been compelled to teach students in the open space if temporary classrooms had not been constructed. “We conduct classes inside safe rooms,” he added. Shrestha informed that technicians had given red signs to the three concrete buildings of the school. “We have not been able to remove the dilapidated buildings till date,” he informed.

As many as 258 school buildings of Ramechhap were damaged completely in the April and May earthquake. It is said that the campaign to construct temporary classrooms were launched by the government and non-governmental organisations working in the education sector after the school buildings collapsed.

It is also said that as many as 150 temporary classrooms were constructed in the district.

District Education Officer Khubiram Adhikari said the total cost for those temporary classrooms would be Rs 150,000.

He informed that teaching-learning activities would continue inside the temporary classes until another alternative was in place. Adhikari said such classrooms would also be constructed in other schools of the district.

Meanwhile, DEO has distributed Rs 1,000 to each quake- victim student in primary schools. Adhikari further informed that Rs 26 million was distributed among 26,700 children of 444 primary schools of the district.

Child Development Society, Nyayek Sansar, Suryodaya Society, Srijanshil Yuba Samaj, among others, were actively involved in the construction of such classrooms.