In a country where illegal land grabbing has been taken to its outrageous limit, even school playgrounds are not spared. A Bangla contemporary carries a pictorial report on the illegal occupation of a government primary school's playground in a village of Kalabari union under Kotalipara, Gopalganj. Established on a privately donated plot of 33 decimals in 1985, the school received government approval in 1991 and was nationalised in 2013. No one had claimed ownership of any portion of the school campus during the long period of almost four decades of the school's operation until one of the villagers demarcated and constructed fences to occupy the playground recently. The man who did this is the nephew of the donor of the land. According to the donor who happens to be the founder headmaster of the school, now retired, his nephew had eight decimal of land there but he was given the same land size from another shared plot elsewhere in exchange for it.
The upazila education officer at Kotalipara has vowed to evict the occupant and free the school playground soon. In case of court cases, it may not be easy unless the name of the man has been omitted from the land record. Similar complicated court cases have dragged on for years, to everyone's disbelief, nowhere in remote areas but in this very capital. In 2014, an English contemporary reported that 54 out of 295 government primary schools were partially occupied by individuals, different government agencies for different purposes. In some cases, the Water and Sewerage Authority occupied school playground to set up pump houses, in other cases members of the Ansar turned a few class rooms of a school into their living quarters, in one case an influential person grabbed a portion of a school's playground to construct a multistoried building, in two other cases, Biharis (stranded Pakistanis) occupied portions of school playground to make their shelters. Similar was the case with slum dwellers erecting living accommodations on primary school playground. Even high schools in two instances have either occupied or refused to vacate primary school buildings long after the temporary arrangement was supposed to be over.
The primary schools' and in rare cases a few high schools' saga of suffering does not end in such ordeals. Schools' playgrounds are used for venues of kitchen markets, weekly markets or even cattle markets. Reports have it that poultry farms or factories emitting noxious gases are set up close to primary schools, which foul the environment so much that teachers and learners have to struggle with repelling stenches as long as they stay at schools.
The fact is that the descendants of the donors of land for schools in many cases no longer inherit the noble spirit of their ancestors and the new generation of land grabbers stops at nothing to get what they want. Even court cases linger for want of political will and the authorities' negligence. If the elements were dealt with an iron hand right from the beginning, no one dared commit such anti-education acts. Without playgrounds, a school is incomplete. Children must play games to grow healthy. Those who deprive the young ones of their right to play alongside their study are anti-social elements warranting social boycott or punishment or both. All the authorities involved should coordinate their acts to evict illegal occupants from school playgrounds everywhere.
