Many schools on narrow lanes, have no fire exits

Gurgaon: Dabua colony of Faridabad, which has narrow lanes, houses several private schools, and most of them don’t have fire exits, a visit by the TOI team has revealed. The areas where most of these schools have been built are congested and have narrow entry and exit points. Besides this, several of them don’t have eight-metre-wide staircases along with emergency exits, which contravene the government’s mandatory fire safety rules.
Moreover, according to the list of unauthorised schools released by the Haryana’s Department of School Education in March this year, as many as 20 schools in Dabua colony are running without recognition of the state government.
The owner of a Faridabad school told TOI that several private schools in these unauthorised colonies were built around two decades ago when safety guidelines to follow while setting up a school weren’t strict. As a result, these schools, he said, have no proper infrastructure to ensure children’s safety.
Talking about the condition of private schools in the colony, district education officer Satender Kaur Verma said, “The school that was gutted in the fire was a play school. But, we will act strongly hereafter as we can’t let our children’s life be in danger. Starting next week, we’ll carry out physical verification of these schools to examine if they have proper infrastructure, firefighting system and other disaster management mechanisms in place.”
Residents in Dabua colony alleged that the area is prone to frequent short-circuit and phase outages owing to crumbling power infrastructure. They also said dangling power cables almost touch the windows of houses, schools and other buildings. According to them, DHBVN should go for an overhaul of power infrastructure in the area, to which discom officials said the department is carrying out its Integrated Power Distribution Scheme (IPDS). Under this scheme, an official said, all worn-out low-tension lines will be converted into cables with proper coating.
“The colony has very narrow lanes. And residents take connection with lesser load, but consume more power. As a result, transformers are subjected to voltages that exceed their design specifications. This could trigger sparks and damage to the power infrastructure. We are carrying out IPDS and will complete it by the end of this month. That should resolve all these issues,” a DHBVN official told TOI.