Safety guidelines for children to be made mandatory in schools of Haryana

Chandigarh, February 27: Targeting to imbibe Supreme Court guidelines baring minimum safety measures in various private and state run schools in the state, the state information commission of Haryana made it mandatory and ensures the implementation by the Department of Education.

 

The state information commissioner, Hemant Atri has approved the orders under section 25(5) of the RTI Act after finding that there is no mechanism in the state to ensure the compliance of 2009 judgment passed by the apex court regarding the safety of children in the schools. He also recommended to set an inquiry under section 20(2) of the RTI Act to the Additional Chief Secretary to fix responsibility of all the concerned for bot implementing the state policy on safety norms at the headquarters and district levels and also take suitable actions as per the provisions of service rules.

The commission has passed these orders while hearing an appeal filed by R P Sharma, a resident of Faridabad district, who had approached the commission after he was denied information by the district administration Gurugram.

During the hearing of the case last week, a reply was filed by district administration Gururgram in which the commission found that the guidelines issued by the Supreme Court (SC) regarding the safe environment in schools has not been implemented in the entire state and there is no mechanism to look into this aspect.

The commission was astonished to observe that despite categorical orders from the SC, the State Policy on safety measures of 25 lakhs children in Haryana is totally ignored by all the authorities. This was evident as there were no available inspection records that nothing has been done to implement the policy.

Therefore now the state has made it quite mandatory to make security issues available for the school students.