“My parents tell me that I should not go to the school as long as Gyanu miss is there to teach us,” says Neha. [break]Her friends Kajal and Anjali, who are also from the Musahar community, too, say, “Our parents tell us that we can go to the school only after Gyanu quits the school. We will not be attending any class until then.”
Like Neha, Kajal and Anjali, nearly 100 Musahar children have been skipping their classes for the last two months thanks to a dispute between their former principal Gyanu Thapa Katwal and School Management Committee (SMC) chairperson Debaki Sada.
Although Hom Raj Bhattarai, who was previously associated with Sishu Jyoti School in Mahendranagar VDC-9, has replaced Thapa as the new principal, local Musahar people, who are apparently provoked by Sada, have kept their children out of school. They say they will not allow Thapa to teach their children.
“The locals after being provoked by others have put their children´s future in jeopardy,” says Laxman Bahadur Thapa, District Education Officer of Sunsari.
Thapa, who faces the charge of embezzling school funds, had drawn the ire of the locals particularly after appointing her brother Tara Thapa as the SMC president and firing teacher Savitri Chaudhary. After Chaudhary was fired, the locals forced the District Education Office of Sunasri to form the new SMC led by Sada on November 10.
Sada announced that she would not allow Thapa to enter the school compound. Later, Thapa, backed by other locals, tried to enter the school compound, which resulted in a clash between two groups. While Thapa has support from the local UCPN (Maoist), Sada has CPN-UML backing, according to SMC members.
While the dispute continues, some parents have started sending their children to other schools. The school, which had 98 students earlier, has only 77 students now.
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