Collector orders schools to send kids home early

JAIPUR: The district administration took precautionary measures after dust storm warnings on Tuesday by directing schools to send children back to their homes early. As the schools were open while the mild dust storm continued in morning, Jaipur district collector issued the directions to close down schools for the day by 10 am.
The scare of dust storm took the city into its grip as the collector cautioned people to stay indoors till 6pm except for urgent work. But, no untoward incident has been reported yet.

Parents were surprised to see messages from schools asking them to take their children back home by around 10am. Early in the morning, the city witnessed strong winds with dust that were enough to create scare in the city. On May 2, more than 40 persons had died due to dust storm mostly in three districts of Bharatpur, Dholpur and Alwar. Taking lessons from the past incident of deaths due to dust storm, the district administration took immediate decision directing schools to send children back home.

However, there are some schools which have declared summer vacations from Wednesday. Informing the parents as bad weather a reason, a school declared summer vacation one day before the scheduled date of summer vacation.

District collector Siddharth Mahajan said that since there was a warning of high velocity winds, measures were taken to prevent any sort of damage.

He said that the district administration appealed to people not to venture out of their houses unnecessarily during warning hours.

The district administration had issued warning and appealed to the people that dust storm was likely to hit the city from 12 noon to 6 pm. Mahajan said that for dealing with any kind of emergency situation, they set up control rooms at district collectorate and also such control rooms have also been established by the police and Jaipur Municipal Corporation. The MET department officials said that the warning will continue till Wednesday.