NAROWAL: The compound of the Government Primary School of Nawan Pind, Baddomalhi, is inundated with sewage.

Students, who happen to be ages 4 to 10 years, sit on the heap of filth every day to get education.

This correspondent spoke to Allah Rakhha Jutt, Murad Ali and Shaukat Gujjar, whose children study in the school. They said there was a sewer pond around the school and the sewage overflowed into the school compound.

They said the unbearable stench stemming from the sewage had made the classrooms` atmosphere unbearable. Since there was no other school in the locality, people had to send their children to this school.

Parents complained that schoolchildren would suffer from fever, diarrhea and skin diseases because of the stench and unhygienic conditions of the school.

Going to the school is a struggle which the students andteacher brave every day. The local community has made an elevated, narrow path by putting soil in the sewage to reach classrooms. Whenever there is rain, the overflowed sewage sinks the path, making the school a no-go area.

Theysaidtheyhadapproached the Education Department and the district administration sev-eral times to fill the pond with earth and construct a boundary wall of the school but to no avail.

Some students Muhammad Adnan, Nasir Ali and Arshed Malik told Dawn poisonous insects and snakes were often seen in the school. They said they had killed more than 40 snakesin the lastfouryears.

Chief Executive Officer of theDistrict Education Authority Muhammad Aslam said the problem of the Government Primary School of Nawan Pind (Baddomalhi) was not in his knowledge. He said he would get updates on the school and tal(e action.

The parents and students raised slogans against the Education Department and district administration for not addressing the issue, which, according to them had lingered on for 35 years. They demanded Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif take strict notice of the situation.

The school is situated in the constituency of Federal Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal Chaudhry (NA-117).

Mr Iqbal has long been taking care of the development of the whole country being the head of the Planning and Development Commission of Pakistan under the Nawaz Sharif government.

He, however, failed to address the problems of the school of his own constituency. The two-anda-hlaf kanal school was established in 1982.