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Students attend police before school
LIWANG, ROLPA, DEC 27 - It’s nine in the morning. Time is running out for Lekhnath Giri, a sixth grader at Bal Kalyan Higher Secondary School. He has to attend a police post before going to school. Like the other students of his group, Giri signs daily attendance on a police register. In Liwang it is mandatory for each and every student to appear before the police everyday.
Having reached the police station, Giri and his classmate Durga Bahadur Bishwokarma pronounced No. 16 and 34. A policeman on duty quickly understood what they meant by the numbers and allowed them to proceed ahead. These are their permanent numbers in the police register. Around 70 students who pass through the Romeo Police Check Post utter their numbers before they go to the school.
For the last two years, the police have kept records of the people passing through this post for security reasons.
“We do not have to repeat our names everyday. We just have to mention what our register number is,” says 12-year-old Giri, “We also have to inform the police whenever we are on leave.” The students are required to make double attendance, before and after the school hours.
It was made mandatory to all the students above lower secondary level to have their names registered to the nearest police post after the district headquarters was fenced with barbed wires to protect it from Maoists’ attacks three years ago. “You have to inform the police in advance if you have problem returning home after duty,” said a teacher who wanted to be unnamed.
The local administration started keeping detailed records of all the people, including the civil servants after the Maoist rebels attacked policemen disguising as students even in the relatively secure district headquarters. But teachers at the school said that they were not officially informed that even students were also required to have their names registered in the police posts. Police inspector Uma Shankar Panjiyar at the district police office said that the existing circumstance forced them to introduce this system.
But the district-based human right organisations and civil society term it as “violation” of people’s right to movement. District Education Officer Bodhi Prasad Khanal said that such arrangements were quite “normal” at the time of conflict. He, however, admits that the ongoing conflict has affected the education sector very badly.
According to the District Education Office, two teachers were killed by the army in Jedbang and Hawam, and two others by the Maoists in Liwang and Gumchal. One student each was also killed by the army in Madichaur and Liwang.Posted on: 2003-12-28 04:46
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