BENGALURU: Chaos prevailed in hundreds of schools across the city on Tuesday as the state government announced a public holiday to mourn the death of Cooperation Minister H.S. Mahadev Prasad, who passed away early on Tuesday morning.
Around 11 am, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah tweeted that the state government has declared a public holiday to pay respects to the departed minister. As the tweet was circulated widely on social media, several schools announced holiday. But parents had a tough time collecting their children.
Some of the parents told Deccan Chronicle that schools alerted them through SMS and asked them to pick up their children by 2 pm.
For children dropped by school buses, the parents were told to come to the drop points as early as possible.
“My two children study at a CBSE school. Both my husband and I work for MNCs. Generally, the school closes at 4 pm and I have adjusted my office timing according to the school timetable. How is it possible for me to run back to school to pick my children at 2 pm” asked Ms Malathi Bhat, a resident of Malleswaram.
Following the holiday announcement, areas around schools witnessed traffic jams as parents rushed to pick up their children. “Normally, we depute additional home guards and traffic police around schools zones at school opening and closing hours. But today, as we were not informed about the holiday, we could not arrange for a bigger force. It led to traffic jams in many parts of the city,” said a traffic police officer from Vijayanagar.
Mr D. Shashikumar of Blossoms School Bagalgunte and General Secretary Karnataka Associated Managements of English Medium Schools (KAMS) said that the government should come out with a clear policy on school holidays. “We wanted to close the school. But we were well aware of the fact that most of the parents can’t come early to pick up their children. So we waited till evening. But this was not so in the cases of many schools.”
