More than 6,500 schools damaged in Cyclone Fani

Bhubaneswar: Cyclone Fani has caused huge damage to the infrastructure of schools and colleges.
As many as 6,791 schools have been damaged in the cyclone; of them, 5,244 are primary schools and 1,547 are secondary schools. The highest number of schools — 2,134 — have been damaged in Puri district, which is followed by Cuttack where more than 1,000 schools have been damaged, official sources said.
“The school and mass education department has incurred an estimated loss of Rs 417.83 crore,” said information and public relation secretary, Sanjay Singh.
The state government has waived this year’s tuition and examination fees of all students in the affected areas up to the secondary school level. Students up to the elementary school level in extremely affected areas will get two additional pairs of school uniforms while those in severely affected areas will get an extra pair of uniform, government sources said.
Meanwhile, special relief commissioner (SRC) Bishnupada Sethi appealed to all private educational institutions to consider waiving the school fees of the students for a month in the severely affected districts of Puri, Khurda, Cuttack, Jagatsinghpur and Kendrapada. “The students have lost their books, study material and uniform. The government has been doing its best to assist the affected people,” Sethi added.
Around 180 higher educational institutions have been severely damaged and 90 institutes partially damaged in the cyclone that hit the state’s coast on May 3. Similarly, several private educational institutes in the affected districts incurred huge losses.
As many as 138 residential schools under the ST and SC development department were damaged in the cyclone. “The loss to infrastructure in these schools would be Rs 592.24 lakh,” Singh said.
As per a preliminary estimate Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA) has incurred losses of around Rs 30 crore, sources in SOA said. Nine different institutes, 13 special research centres and 35 research labs under SOA have suffered extensive damage to their buildings, other infrastructure and equipment. The maximum damage was inflicted on the Institute of Medical Sciences and SUM Hospital, SOA’s faculty of medical sciences. However, patient-care in the hospital was not affected.
The infrastructure of the Centurion University of Technology and Management (CUTM) at Jatni was also badly damaged. Starting from the administrative block to the workshops, laboratories and hostels, everything has fallen prey to the wrath of Fani. The estimated loss would be more than Rs 30 crore, sources said.