The RTE Act mandates that each school must have a separate toilet for girls and boys. Three years after its implementation, there are thousands of schools across India that do not fulfil this requirement. VV-PACS Correspondent Rekha Bhangre reports one such case from Seoni District Madhya Pradesh.
The Marzhor Primary school caters to a number of small villages close to it. For those who live in Marzhor, it is easy to go back home to use the toilet but for other girls like Sonali, who lives 2 km away, every trip to the toilet is a nightmare. The girls’ toilet of the school has been broken for sometime now.
Most go to the fields behind or make a dash to a friends house so that they don’t waste too much time outside school.
The headmaster and village council head have filed applications and followed up on them to ensure that the toilet for the girls gets repaired. No action has been taken by the Block level administration so far.
The lack of toilets is a major factor of girls dropping out of school in India. Please help ensure that these girls don’t have to stop coming to school!
Call to Action: Call Sunil Pawar in charge of the Block Resource Centre, on 9425391622 and ask him to immediately construct a toilet in this school for the girls.
About the Partnership: The Poorest Areas Civil Society (PACS) Programme and Video Volunteers have come together to create the Community Correspondents Network. The videos generated by the network will be able to highlight voices from the margins, providing skills to social communicators to provide advocacy tools to community based organizations.
