<i>Students attend classes on furniture shop's veranda</i>

Kids take classes on the veranda of a wooden furniture shop adjacent to their Haji Tabarak Non-Government Primary School in Sadar upazila of Chapainawabganj, for want of classrooms.Photo: STAR

Believe it or not, students of Hossaindanga Haji Tabarok Registered Non-government Primary School in Sadar upazila attend their classes on the veranda of a local furniture shop due to shortage of classrooms.
Also there are only three teachers for 218 students of the school established in 1985 in Jhilim union, said Ahsanul Haque, assistant teacher of the school.
The one storied-building of the school, which was later built by Local Government and Engineering Department (LGED) in 1995, has four rooms, one for the teachers and the rest for Shishu (elementary) to Class Five students.
Following the shortage of classrooms, students of Shishu class have been receiving their lessons on the timbers kept on the veranda of the shop in front of the school building, said Ahsanul Haque.
“Students often get injured when the timbers stacked up on the veranda accidentally fall on them”, he added.
Aziza Akhtar, a student of Shishu class, said “I was hurt a few days ago when a slice of timber suddenly fell on my shoulder”.
We are receiving our lessons on the veranda as we have no classroom, she added.
While visiting the school recently, this correspondent found Ahsanul Haque teaching the students on stacked up timbers.
Saiful Islam, a guardian, said his son reads in the school as he had no other option.
“I can not send him to any other school as those are a few kilometers away from the village”, he said.
Headmaster Hazrat Ali said they brought the matter to the notice of the school managing committee, upazila chairman and upazila education officials, but to no effect.
Contacted, upazila primary education officer Abul Bashar Shamsuzzaman said, they wrote to the authorities concerned several times but all went unheeded.
“We will write again with a fresh proposal to the authorities”, he added.