Parents seek govt probe into safety of Mount Carmel School building

Following the report, Mount Carmel High School, which is among the oldest private schools in Ahmedabad, announced that it would move its nearly 1,250 students to Loyola Hall.

However, parents have alleged a ‘hidden’ agenda by the management in declaring the school building unfit and moving the students to other buildings. On August 15, they formed a committee to take further course of action.

Rejecting the GERI report in its recent meeting, the parents body demanded testing by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Roorkee). “Structural reports from reputed organisations like IIT Roorkee should be done that should be shared with the parents and a decision taken only after their consent. The school has not shared the GERI report till date with the parents and we are knowing developments only through media,” Kandarb Bhatt, one of the patents, told The Indian Express.

Notably, the school management had submitted a similar structural report based on the findings of a private testing agency earlier this year. The second testing by GERI, a government agency, was necessitated after parents alleged that the safety report was a “conspiracy” by the management for “financial gains”.

The parents have also sought the formation of a panel, comprising five members from the management and two parents from each class as selected by the parents committee. “Two years back, the parents of classes V-VIII students were informed that the annexe building needed repair. After the repair of the annexe building, students would be shifted there and the building in front would be repaired, too (the parents were told). Till date, no repair work has been done for the annexe building,” another parent from the committee claimed.

Meanwhile, the school management is yet to submit a detailed report of the new arrangement with required documents to the District Education Office (DEO) for approval following which the school will cease to run from the existing building. “We are awaiting the report from the school on the alternate arrangement. Both the GERI report and parents’ concerns have been communicated to the concerned department in Gandhinagar,” DEO Ahmedabad City R M Chaudhary told The Indian Express.

According to the arrangement, Mount Carmel will run in the afternoon shift from Loyola Hall’s building till a permanent school campus is ready, likely on the outskirts of the city. The existing area of the school is around 2 acres in the prime locations of Ashram Road in Navrangpura.