Mawkyrwat, March 6: In a generation of smart classrooms, competition, and other amenities, a school in South West Khasi Hills functions with just two blackboards, partitioned classrooms, and a leaked roof.
Vesto UP School Nongtwah Rangjadong, 30 km from Mawkyrwat, is a school founded and sponsored by a 70-year-old retired government LP school teacher, Estolin Khardewsaw in 2013 to help students in the village.
“I have faced many problems in the last ten years and many more problems are coming, but as a founder, I will continue to support the school till the day I die,” Khardewsaw said as he appealed to the state government to extend help for the school, especially for the building and support of salary for teachers which he had written many times to the education department.
With 30 students and four teachers, the building of the school is one of the worst in the district as it was constructed with wood and covered with CGI sheets which have developed holes almost everywhere.
It consists of four classrooms, i.e., Class-V to Class-VIII, and the rooms are partitioned with plastic rice bags, tables, and benches were ruined and the teachers had to wait for their turn to use the blackboard as the school has only two of them.
Speaking to media persons, Khardewsaw, said that being a retired teacher he has seen the problems faced by the students in his village in which many of them had to drop out of school after getting promoted from the government lower primary school because they could not afford to go to schools in Mawkyrwat which is about 30 km away and those who decided to continue schooling for upper primary and above had to walk 2-3 hours to reach the nearest school and during the rainy season there were many times that they had to return halfway.
With the intention to help students coming from poor families, Khardewsaw with only a monthly pension in his hand started the school in 2013.
