Palpa Gulmi schools flood damage
Floods and landslides have damaged 14 schools in Palpa and Gulmi districts, and daily teaching has been disrupted at some of them, Gorkhapatra reports from Tansen. The damage was caused by the seasonal rain that lashed the two hill districts, according to the Social Development Division Office in Palpa, which collected the damage reports from schools across both districts.
Laxman Ghimire, chief of the division office, said 11 of the damaged schools are in Gulmi and three are in Palpa. In Gulmi, rain damaged Janata Secondary School at Satyawati and the Chandrakot, Sharda and Ramkot secondary schools, among others. The worst hit area is Malika Rural Municipality, where floods and landslides damaged eight schools, the highest number reported for any single local level in the two districts.
The eight damaged schools in Malika Rural Municipality are Arjai Secondary School, Siddha Malika Basic School, Chhaphile Secondary School, Jamal Pokhara Secondary School, Devisthapan Secondary School, Hawangdi Secondary School, Khadga Basic School and Siddha Primary School. The list spans primary, basic and secondary schools, so children of every school age in the municipality are affected. Several of the schools now need repairs to classrooms and boundary structures before teaching can return fully to normal.
In Palpa, the rain damaged Bishnu Primary School in Tansen, the district headquarters, and two schools in Rampur, Ramtulasi Secondary School and Bhanubhakta Secondary School, where school infrastructure was damaged. Palpa’s three damaged schools are fewer than Gulmi’s eleven, but the affected buildings serve some of the most crowded classrooms in their areas.
The division office described a familiar pattern of monsoon damage to hill school buildings. Windstorms that came with the rain blew the roofs off some schools and cracked the walls of others. Landslides have put some buildings at risk, fences have collapsed, and classrooms and school materials have been damaged by water entering the buildings. At the schools worst affected, regular classes have not been able to run as usual, the office said. The report lists damage to buildings, fences, classrooms and materials, and does not put a cost figure on the losses.
The damage adds to the yearly repair burden that hill districts face for public school infrastructure after every monsoon, when district and local offices must find funds to make damaged classrooms safe and usable again. For the 14 schools named this time, the immediate task is repair of roofs, walls and fences so that students can return to normal classes.
The Palpa Gulmi schools flood damage underlines how urgently hill schools need repairs before classes can return to normal.