Students in school clean-up stir

Updated on: Saturday, January 09, 2010

Kolkata: At least 300 schoolgirls in uniform blocked Suresh Sarkar Road, off AJC Bose Road, for half-an-hour on Friday morning to protest against the way locals were using the boundary wall of their school and the adjacent pavement.

The agitation triggered a huge traffic snarl that spilled on to Moulali and S N Banerjee Road. The girls lifted the blockade after cops from Entally police station assured them that the boundary wall and pavement would be cleaned by Monday morning.

The students belong to Baptist Girls’ HS School, a government-sponsored institution. The school was established way back in 1821 by William Carey, the Baptist missionary from England. Originally called Baptist Mission School, it was taken over by the state government in 1969. KMC is about to grant heritage status to the premises.

One will not be able to walk on the pavement adjacent to the boundary wall of the school because the locals use it as a makeshift garbage vat. “They use the wall as a toilet. Those who are welloff tie their dogs to the pavement. The dogs are taken inside the apartments only after they defecate,” complained the school’s headmistress, Kakoli Mitra.

“The stench makes it impossible for us to hold classes with the windows open. We tried to request local youths not to urinate on our walls, but failed. We made our children paint the boundary wall and draw pictures to stop people from urinating. But nothing deterred them. So, we decided to take to the streets to draw the attention of the administration,” said Punam Bhattacharjee, a teacher.

The girls carried posters with messages like, “This is a school, please respect it and do not litter” and “We cannot walk on our pavement because you are irresponsibly using it”. Girls were seen talking to stranded car passengers, apologising for the hold-up and explaining why they blocked such an important road between 11.30 am and noon.

Students in school clean-up stir

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