Cattle market in school compound

Almost every school in the country's villages has a playground. People acquainted with these playgrounds or compounds are accustomed to seeing the spaces being used for purposes not even remotely related to school curricula. These open-air venues often have to accommodate local meetings, fairs, and even folk cultural events like 'jatra'. But that the grounds serving as cattle markets, that too once a week, requires a stretch of the imagination. Bluntly speaking, it's an atrocious idea. But it is now black-and-white reality, and this is what has been happening at a secondary school in a Jhenidah village for the last fifty years.

The students, teachers and the general staff of the school are forced to leave the institution after attending it for the first half of the weekly market day, Monday. Not that the students enjoy this holiday. Serious students continue to feel the impact of this disruption in their studies. They feel helpless and find none to turn to and speak of their grievances. The teachers are similarly putting up with the ordeal. The messy, noise and dirt-filled state of a cattle market does not need much elaboration. The most revolting aspect of these markets is the dust and the strong stench that fill the air at the venue. The nuisance remains lodged in the place's atmosphere for days after the market hours are over. In fact, the hapless school students have to go through the ordeal of the muddy filth left by the cattle market for the whole week, except on the holidays.

The nightmare in which the school keeps on surviving does not go unnoticed. Guardians and conscious people in the locality have long been putting in their best of efforts to shift the market to a different place. But those were in vain. The market is allegedly being run on a lease arrangement enforced by an influential member of the school managing committee. In such a difficult situation, it's the upazila and the district administrations which can come forward, and save the school students and teachers from this weekly ordeal.

Habibur Rahman

Shailkupa,

Jhenidah