Pune, August 11: In the wake of around 1,000 schools in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad remaining closed for a week, nearly 2.5 lakh students will be sitting at home, with private coaching classes also ruled out for the period.
Over and above this, there are 200 colleges that between them have a similar number of students who too will be staying at home and in many cases in city hostels.
This comes in the backdrop of some 30 schools in the city with H1N1 cases remaining closed on Monday. As apprehension ruled supreme in the city early Monday morning after a third swine flu death was reported, many parents decided against sending their wards to schools.
“It is risky to send my child to school as children are the most vulnerable lot. I decided not to send him though the school was open on Monday,” said K Preetee, whose son is in a pre-primary school.
Makarand Chitale, father of a Class II student of Symbiosis School, welcomed District Guardian Minister Ajit Pawar’s decision. “We were expecting the decision by Chief Minister Ashok Chavan on Sunday.
As there was no such decision, we decided not to send our son to school on Monday. The decision to shut the schools has come at the right time,” he said. Chitale said playgrounds should also be closed as a precautionary measure.
Meanwhile, confusion prevailed among school authorities today, as they had not been given full-fledged rights to shut the schools. “We feared that if our school remained closed only out of parents’ sentiments, we would lose government aid resulting in fund shortage for teachers’ salary,” said a school principal.
Once the decision to close down the schools came through in the afternoon, almost all schools and colleges that remained open on Monday downed shutters. “We already had a low turnout today. As the news came in, we suspended the remaining lectures,” said S N Mali, dean of students’ activities at Vishwakarma Institute of Technology.
The issue before the colleges now is what to do with the hostel students, as outstation students find it practically difficult to go home. While some colleges have allowed them to reside in hostels, some have not. A private institute that has a campus at Lavale has allowed its students to continue staying in the hostel. “We cannot ask them to go back as most of them are from other states,” said an officer of the institute.
“We have not forced the students staying at hostels to go home and we will be looking after their basic requirements,” said Mali. University of Pune Vice-Chancellor Arun Adsool said the UoP had not forced the hostel students to vacate the campus.
–Agencies