Leh students get a warm switch to hygiene

LEH: Children at the Tibetan Children’s Village in Agling would seldom wash hands after using the toilet or before eating their meals till the first solar energy powered all-weather hand wash and drinking water station was made functional in September last year.

For the children of this primary school located in Leh district amid snow clad peaks and low hanging clouds, washing hands in the harsh cold involved crossing the entire school complex from the classrooms at the rear end to the lone hand pump outside the school’s front gate.

With help from staff or their own tender hands they would man the hand pump to fill up a bucket of ice cold ground water and then wash up. Few were motivated to do that in the biting cold. Hence, hand washing was seen to be the first casualty as temperatures dropped. The result was poor hygiene and ill health.

Things started changing when voluntary organisation ‘Save the Children’ started a project to address this concern of Tibetan refugees in the region in 2017. Currently, these all-weather hand washing units are functional in five schools for Tibetan refugees at Agling, Choglamsar and Changthang. Children from pre-primary to class 12 come to these schools from refugee camps in these areas. It is estimated that there are around 7,500 Tibetan refugees in Ladakh with almost 5,500 of them concentrated in camps in Leh district.

In the middle of the primary school complex in Agling, one finds a blue and white single storey building with glass windows. This is the hand washing and drinking water centre. Children can be seen rushing in and out happily. Through the windows you can see happy faces blowing soap bubbles and laughing heartily. The cold weather and rain outside does not bother them one bit now as hand washing is something they look forward to irrespective of the temperature.

The primary school has around 150 children up to class 5. The students at Agling will join the senior school a few kilometres away at Choglamsar from class 6 where a similar unit awaits them.

Before leaving for lunch, class 5 student Tenzin Minkey said most children like her washed hands rarely when they had to walk all the way to the hand pump. Minkey aspires to be a scientist and feels that access to clean water for hand washing and drinking has changed her outlook towards hygiene. “We now understand how good hygiene helps fight germs,” she said. 11-year-old Tenzin Tsephel said when she was not into regular hand washing, she would suffer from stomach ache and cold and coughs.

According to a Save the Children study conducted in 2017, 22% households in Agling, 22% in Choglamsar and 13% in Changthan reported that they sometimes washed hands. There were 7% households in Choglamsar and 27% in Changthan that reported that they did not practice hand wash after toilet.

So, how does the insulation and solar energy work in these hand washing units. “Features for solarisation include south orientation of the building, cement plaster on inner and outer walls, filling the cavity between inner and outer wall with saw dust towards the east, west and north direction, and fitting the southern wall with double glass,” Chhemet Lamo, programme coordinator in Ladakh for ‘Save the Children’ said.

“Construction of corridor cum air lock, use of saw dust in the roof are additional measures taken to provide double insulation to the rooms and minimize heat escape,” she added. Submersible pumps along with rising pipes and electric connection are used to ensure functionality of the water station during sub zero temperatures. The project is being now managed and monitored by the school management based on an operation and maintenance plan prepared by Save the Children in coordination with the community.

With the need for water access points a critical need in the refugee camps where these children return to after school, the voluntary organisation supplemented the access by setting up submersible pumps in community spaces and made the residents in-charge of their maintenance and use.