Rain and landslide cuts off road in Darjeeling, Darjeeling schools advance their puja holidays

Darjeeling, Sept. 26: Continuous rain in the hills for the past 48 hours prompted many schools to suspend classes today and others to advance their Puja vacation by three days.

A stretch of about 20 metres of the 18 Lebong Cart Road in Darjeeling caved in around 10.30 last night, disrupting traffic between the town and areas like Singamari and Lebong on the fringes and even to Jorethang in Sikkim.

Although there is an alternative route through the Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park to bypass the cave-in, St Joseph’s School (North Point) decided to close down for the Puja vacation today itself.

The Puja holiday was earlier scheduled from September 30.

“Even though there is an alternative route to reach our school, we thought it would be too much of an inconvenience to ask students to use that congested stretch. This is why we decided to advance the Puja vacation,” said Father Kinley Tshering, rector of North Point School in Singamari, around 3km from Darjeeling town. The day scholars come to school in buses or cars. Some of them also walk to school. Classes will resume after vacation on October 16, as scheduled.

Father Tshering said the parents of the boarders have been informed. The school has around 600 boarders from the hills, Siliguri, Calcutta, Bihar, Sikkim, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and even Thailand.

Mount Hermon School, which is situated in the same area as North Point, however, did not suspend classes today.

“If the rain persists we may think of closing down for a day or two,” said George Fernandez, principal of Mount Hermon.

Asked if the Puja holidays, scheduled from October 1, would be advanced, Fernandez said: “With the earthquake, then the landslide and the rains the general spirit is very low. I personally would have wanted to close down for vacation but again if we do so the parents will be inconvenienced as most of them have already booked tickets for October 1. Rescheduling their tickets during tourist season would be difficult.”

Mount Hermon authorities, however, said they might allow boarders from nearby areas like Sikkim to leave earlier if the rain persisted.

Many schools like Ramakrishna Siksha Parisad and St Robert’s Higher Secondary, located in the heart of the town, also suspended classes because of the rain.

Weather experts have warned that a low pressure had developed in the region and there could be more rain in the days to come

“A low pressure trough is hovering over north Bengal and adjoining Bihar at 5.8km above the sea level. This would cause heavy to very heavy rainfall in Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri and Cooch Behar districts in the next 24 hours,” Indranil Sengupta, the assistant meteorological officer of the Regional Met Office in Jalpaiguri, said.

The stretch of 18 Lebong Cart Road that caved in is likely to take almost a month to be restored. Most of the Darjeeling Tea gardens residing in the Lebong valley region are also cut off.

District magistrate Saumitra Mohan said: “Engineers from the public works department are trying to get the road temporarily restored but it will take about a month to permanently repair the stretch.”

Source: The Telegraph

‘Closed’ tag on eight schools across the Darjeeling Hills

Darjeeling, March 8: The teachers’ union of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha has declared eight primary schools across the Darjeeling hills “closed” because of the absence of permanent teachers.

“Eight schools are now being run only by casual and voluntary teachers and we consider them as closed. Appointments to the posts of primary teachers have not been made for long and this is the fallout of the faulty system of the Bengal government. Since casual and voluntary teachers do not have any financial powers, the primary teacher’s union is terming these institutions as closed,” said Bhusan Thapa, the general secretary of the Gorkha Primary Teachers’ Organisation (GPTO).

The eight institutions are Milan Primary School, Lower Pritam Primary School, Phanpho Primary School (all in Kalimpong), Dooteria Primary School (Rimbick), Manju Primary School (Sonada), Kuwapani Primary School (Gorubathan), Chamong Unit Primary School (Nagri Farm) and Dhajea Tea Estate Primary School (Dhajea).

There are 774 primary schools in the hills, of which 170 have only one permanent teacher each. Two permanent teachers are posted at 233 schools.

The last recruitment drive for primary school teachers had been carried out in 2002. “Interviews for 120 posts were completed but the appointment letters have not yet been issued. This is a conspiracy of the state government to keep the hills backward,” alleged Thapa.

At the moment, there are 2,140 permanent teachers in the hills, apart from 868 casual and 407 voluntary teachers. Casual teachers are employed and paid by the DGHC.

B.L. Meena, the DGHC administrator, said: “The schools are being run by casual workers. There is no school board in the hills but we have written to the state government to put in such a mechanism immediately. Once the board is formed, things will be sorted out”.

He admitted that the 120 teachers who had appeared for the interview in 2002 had not been appointed. “The panel (of selected candidates) had been prepared but Subash Ghisingh (then DGHC chairman) did not give the appointment orders. I do not think that the list will be valid for so long.”

Asok Bhattacharya faces Darjeeling hill school heat

The heads of ICSE and CBSE schools in Kalimpong have denied the allegation that the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha had demanded money from them.

Bengal urban development minister Asok Bhattacharya while accusing the Morcha of extorting money from the schools in the hills had claimed the party had demanded Rs 2 crore from the heads of the institutions at a meeting held in Gorubathan on March 1. MORE...