Badnawar (Madhya Pradesh): The hand-washing facilities at government primary and secondary schools in Badnawar, intended to promote hand hygiene among the students, are rendered useless due to poor quality construction and half-completed structures.
About 90 per cent of hand-washing units in the schools of the district are in disrepair due to the negligence and colluding between the contractors and government officials.
According to sources, contractors who got contracts for constructing these units withdrew funds under political pressure and obtained approval reports through undue influence. Some even resorted to presenting photographs of units constructed in other schools as their own.
As a result, these hand wash units remain incomplete and have never been used. Poor construction quality caused tiles to fall off and many units collapsed within days. Despite allocations of funds ranging from Rs 15,000 to Rs 50,000 for each unit, the scheme has been marred by corruption and substandard work.
While some units constructed under the school management committee still function, those built by the RES department have mostly been destroyed.
The chief engineer of the public health engineering department has even blacklisted six contractors for negligence.
Despite official claims that 80 per cent of the work is complete on paper, the reality on the ground paints a starkly different picture.
