Delays due to rain take life of 11-year-old
The Hindu
Parents forced to carry sick child through high water, in vain
A swollen stream which cut off contacts with outside world for a small hamlet in Tandur mandal of Vikarabad district cost the life of a 11-year-old girl suffering from fever as her treatment was delayed by several hours. With no other road communication left for the habitation, the girl's father Harijan Balappa and his wife Amrutamma carried Harika on their shoulders by turns walking three kilometers over a railway track to reach a motorable road where they hired an autorickshaw up to the government hospital at Tandur on Friday evening. The doctors at the hospital advised Amrutamma who was left alone as her husband had returned for work to rush the girl to the government owned Niloufer Children's Hospital in Hyderabad. Balappa told The Hindu that Amrutamma with the help of her brothers at Tandur pooled money to hire an ambulance but to their shock the Tandur-Hyderabad highway was breached at two places en route. The driver took the vehicle on a different route via Parigi which took 15 kms more to reach Hyderabad late in the night.Several principals of government and private schools in Delhi on Tuesday said the Directorate of Education (DoE) circular from a day earlier, directing schools to conduct classes in ‘hybrid’ mode, had caused confusion regarding day-to-day operations as they did not know how many students would return to school from Wednesday and how would teachers instruct in two modes — online and in person — at once. The DoE circular on Monday had also stated that the option to “exercise online mode of education, wherever available, shall vest with the students and their guardians”. Several schoolteachers also expressed confusion regarding the DoE order. A government schoolteacher said he was unsure of how to cope with the resumption of physical classes, given that the order directing government offices to ensure that 50% of the employees work from home is still in place. On Monday, the Commission for Air Quality Management in the National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas (CAQM) had, on the orders of the Supreme Court, directed schools in Delhi-NCR to shift classes to the hybrid mode, following which the DoE had issued the circular. The court had urged the Centre’s pollution watchdog to consider restarting physical classes due to many students missing out on the mid-day meals and lacking the necessary means to attend classes online. The CAQM had, on November 20, asked schools in Delhi-NCR to shift to the online mode of teaching.