They gathered at the school this morning and questioned the employees there on their security clearance.
After the shocking murder of Pradduman Thakur in the washroom of Ryan International School, Bhondsi, parents of students in the Noida Sector 39 branch gathered in front of the school this morning demanding to see security clearances and proper ID cards of the employees there, starting from the guard to drivers.
They wanted security tightened in the school, so no such crime could be committed anywhere else again.
Parents said they paid school fees to the tune of Rs 18,000 and transport fee of Rs 8,500, but they would stop sending their children to school altogether if they were not safe there.
Rakesh Singh, a parent, said they discovered peripheral staff without ID cards, or even Aadhar cards on the school premises. This was shocking, as even parents had been issued proper photo ID cards, which they needed even to enter the school on parent-teacher meetings.
Some of the parents even alleged that after the gruesome Gurgaon incident, the school management had got the floors and toilets cleaned over the weekend. They said they never cleaned the toilets before.
A five-member team of parents met the school principal and put forward 23 points to be implemented for tighter security. Parents demanded a separate washroom for students and the peripheral staff of the school, with a female and a male attendant outside every washroom; they said the supporting staff should be given school identity cards and demanded that police verification be done; they also demanded surveillance of every bus and its route, with information reaching both parents and the school via GPS and CCTV cameras.
Rajini Singh, a parent, said that the supporting staff of the school, such as drivers and gardeners, should be given a school uniform to wear, in which their names and ID numbers should be clearly mentioned.
Some of the parents also alleged that the CCTV cameras installed in the school were not functional, but school officials denied this, saying they had more 15 such cameras in various points across the school, and all functional.
Sumita Mukherjee, principal of Ryan International, agreed to instal 20 more CCTV cameras on the school premises wherever the parents wanted. “We accept the demands the parents have made, but need 15 to 20 days to implement these,” Mukherjee said.
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