Government imposes a blanket ban on excursions and picnics

Updated on: Monday, December 24, 2012

Stung by a recent tragedy of three students drowning near Sirpur during a picnic, school authorities in Chhattisgarh have come up with a pro-active step to deal with the situation by imposing a blanket ban on excursions and picnics.

The directives came after the death of three students of Shakuntala Vidyalaya, Bhilai, due to drowning in Sirpur where they had gone for school picnic. The district education office, in a circular, directed all school authorities not to organise excursions and other outdoor activities in order to prevent recurrence of such incidents. Many schools, which have planned picnic programmes in advance, had to cancel them, in compliance with the orders from the authorities, and returned the fee collected from the students. However, the school authorities had to face the ire of the students, as well as that of parents, due to the last minute cancellations of the picnic programme. In such schools, where picnics have been cancelled, the teachers are having a tough time handling the task of returning the money collected for the picnic from the parents. "It is very difficult to collect the money from students as it involves problems of handling change, students turning up with money on different days etc. We were surprised and furious when we learnt that we have to now return the money to students. But once we learnt the reason behind the decision of our management our anger subsided, but we do feel sorry for our students as they deserve at least one outing every year," said a teacher of a reputed school on condition of anonymity. But not everyone is complaining as the decision has provided relief to the parents who have been worried after the recent incident.

Rinku Singh, a parent said, "We cannot say no to our children as they will complain about us being too cautious. Also our children will compare our decisions with their peer's parents but the decision by the administration to put a moratorium on outings has given us a way out of this fix."

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