TIRUNELVELI
Students of 139-year-old Ashbourne Middle School behind Alagumuthu Kone statue in Palayamkottai, which was started with the prime objective of imparting education to Hindu girls, suffered from serious respiratory problems on Tuesday as the surface of the nearby road was cleaned with a compressor even as the children were in the school.
As the road workers started cleaning the road with the tractor-mounted compressor around 10.45 a.m., a mandatory exercise to be carried out before applying bitumen – blue metal mixture, the highly hazardous dust flying off the surface entered the school and business establishments situated nearby. While the traders opposed the work in vain, the teachers and the students of the school chose to digest it silently.
“Though we closed the doors and the windows, the dust from the road entered the classrooms through narrow ventilators to cause respiratory problems to all the 100 children, aged between 6 and 13 years, from poor families. Parents of more than 40 children had to take the affected kids to doctors,” said one of the teachers, who informed their correspondent of the problem.
Though the surface of the road to be relaid was cleaned on Tuesday, the work was not started till Wednesday evening.
“We welcome relaying of roads as it will ensure safety of road-users. At the same time, the exercise should be done without harming others. Instead of doing it during the day, they could have done it after 10 p.m.,” said a teacher.
Another problem the children face is from the dumper placer lorries being used by the Corporation for collecting garbage.
“Since these lorries are parked near our school, the unbearable stench emanating from these vehicles triggers nausea to the students and the teachers as well. The Corporation officials should instruct the drivers to park the vehicles in the sprawling open space near Centenary Hall or some other place,” another teacher said.
A senior Corporation official said the contractor would be given appropriate instruction so that the road laying exercise would not affect the public. “The garbage collection lorries will also be shifted to some other place,” he said.
