Pune schools in a mess, PCMC chief draws fire for ‘apathy’

PCMC’s education department has accused him of bunking at least four meetings in the last one month without assigning any concrete reasons.

While over 100 schools run by the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) are in a state of disarray due to lack of basic infrastructure, Municipal Commissioner Rajeev Jadhav has come under flak for not taking the issue seriously.

PCMC’s education department has accused him of bunking at least four meetings in the last one month without assigning any concrete reasons.

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The department, led by its chairman Chetan Ghule and deputy chairman Nana Shivale, have been visiting civic schools for the past few days to take stock of the situation there. The team has found that basic

infrastructure like toilets and drinking water facilities have been woefully inadequate. The girl students are the worst hit as the number of toilet blocks are far less in number than their strength in a particular school.

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“The basic infrastructure in civic schools is in complete shambles. We have so far visited several schools and have found everything inadequate. Not only are toilets less in numbers compared to students’ strength, but the way they are been maintained speaks a lot about civic apathy,” Ghule said.

He said even teachers were hit hard. “The schools buildings are in a bad shape, chairs and benches have been broken. The playgrounds have been ill-maintained and encroached upon. The security is pathetic…,” he alleged.

Ghule said that to highlight the issues and take them up seriously, they had urged the municipal commissioner to convene a meeting of education official and civic officials. “The commissioner was graceful enough to take prompt action by convening as many as four meetings in past one month. However, we regret to say that he cancelled the meetings at the last minute. He had the time to attend other civic meetings, but not a meeting which relates to ensuring a good educational environment for students,” he alleged.

The last and fourth meeting was convened at Auto Cluster in Chinchwad. “The officials from various departments, including water supply and health, had come, but the commissioner cancelled the meeting at the last minute and instead rushed to the meeting where TDR issue was to be discussed,” Ghule said.

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Denying the allegations, the PCMC chief said there were other pressing issues which needed his immediate attention and therefore he had to cancel the meeting of the education officials at the last minute.

“But in the coming week, I will hold a meeting to improve the educational environment. I will personally visit several of the schools to check the infrastructure. PCMC will do everything possible to create a conducive educational atmosphere for its students,” he said.

PCMC has 136 primary schools and 18 secondary schools with over 60,000 students.

Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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