Nearly One Million Children Will Not Return To School In Nepal - Unicef

KATHMANDU, May 9 (Bernama) – The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said at least 950,000 children in Nepal will not be able to return to school after the recent earthquake, unless urgent action is taken to provide temporary learning spaces and repair damaged schools. Almost 24,000 classrooms had been damaged or destroyed in the 7.8 magnitude quake that hit the country on April 25, with many suffering further damage in subsequent aftershocks, UNICEF said in a statement. UNICEF representative in Nepal Tomoo Hozumi said the scale of the education crisis was expected to grow over the coming days and weeks as additional information flowed in from remote areas. Schools in Nepal have remained closed after the earthquake and are due to reopen on May 15. "Almost one million children who were enrolled in school before the earthquake could now find they have no school building to return to," Hozumi said. "Children affected by the earthquake need urgent life-saving assistance like clean water and shelter, but schools in emergencies, even in a temporary setup - play a vital role too. "They minimise disruption to children’s education, protect them from exploitation and abuse, and provide them with messages to keep them safe and healthy," Hozumi added. In the severely affected districts like Gorkha, Sindhupalchok and Nuwakot, it is estimated that more than 90 per cent of schools have been destroyed, while around 80 per cent of school buildings have collapsed in Dhading. In some areas, including Kathmandu and Bhaktapur, about nine in ten surviving school buildings have been used as emergency shelters. UNICEF said it was concerned that great strides made over the last 25 years in increasing primary school enrolment in Nepal – from 64 per cent in 1990 to more than 95 per cent today – could suffer a serious setback in the aftermath of the earthquake. UNICEF has launched a US$50 million appeal to support its humanitarian response to the earthquake in Nepal over the next three months, as part of a wider inter-agency flash appeal. -- BERNAMA