The drive has been initiated as schools witnessed a decline in the attendance of girls enrolled in the ninth and tenth grades during menstruation.[break]
According to District Education Officer Mukti Singh Thakuri, such toilets will be built in 95 schools this year.
“We received many complaints that girl students were facing problems changing clothes and keeping themselves clean,” Thakuri said, explaining the motive behind the drive. The toilets will have separate changing rooms as well.
Thakuri hopes that after the toilets are built, girl students will stop missing schools when they are menstruating.
Shakuntala Sharma, vice-president of Teachers Union, Baglung, welcomed the drive. “We had been demanding such arrangement since long,” he said.
The DEO has allocated Rs 200,000 for each school to build such toilets. The toilets will have arrangement of running water.
Schools will upgrade infrastructure under this drive. The government has earmarked Rs 79.6 million in this year´s budget for increasing access to education, apart from Rs 500,000 allocated for each higher secondary school for maintenance, according to Kushma Raj Upadhyay, an official at the DEO.
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