By: Kamran Khamiso Khowaja
THATTA: The depilated building of Government High School Gujjo has put the lives of students as well as teaching and non-teaching staff at dire risk as they have to sit inside a damaged building to attend their classes for the past 7 years.
The school situated in the Gujjo town of district Thatta is deprived of all basic facilities but the major concern is the derelict building of the school that has forced several students to move to other schools for the sake of their lives but those who can not afford to shift to any other school due to limited financial resources are under compulsion to sit inside the building that can collapse at any time.
The school with an enrollment of around 350 students has no Headmaster office, staff room, science lab, and computer lab besides that only four partially damaged rooms are used to accommodate such a large number of students. Another issue that the school administration is comprehending for the past many years is the lack of teaching and non-teaching staff that has further messed the state of affairs.
Mr. Lutafat Ali the Headmaster of the neglected school told this ascribe that the school came into existence in 1989 and was once a burgeoning educational institute but gradually it lost the reputation owing to lack of facilities and the crumbling building.
He said the school was acutely understaffed as there were vacancies for as many as 13 Junior school teachers. Talking about the attitude of authorities concerned towards the issue he said that officials of the Sindh Education department, judges, elected representatives, and representatives of different non-governmental organizations had time and again visited the school and assured to resolve the issues but no headway was made in this regard as yet.
Member of GSTA Mirpur Sakro chapter Shiraz Memon said that following inattention of the concerned authorities one of the famous educational institutes of the district was on the verge of collapse and there were several schools across the district Thatta facing similar sort of problems; he noted
Rafiq Mirbahar, a social activist, said that in the era when private schools were resorting to modern techniques for imparting quality education the schools of district Thatta lacked basic facilities.
Teachers and people from different segments of life demanded a new building and the status of “Higher secondary” for the Government High School Gujo.
