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Govt. tells Parliament most schools have girls’ toilets. But who will keep them clean?
Govt. tells Parliament most schools have girls’ toilets. But who will keep them clean? Premium
Across India, sanctioned posts for cleanliness workers in government schools remain largely invisible, often subsumed under vague categories such as "other staff," and hence remain mostly vacant. A question raised by Tharaniventhan M.S. from Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, during the ongoing Winter Session 2025, sought State and Union Territory-wise details of functional and non-functional girls' toilets in government schools. Responding on December 1, 2025, the Minister of State for Education, Jayant Chaudhary, cited data indicating that 94% of schools across India have fully functional girls' toilets.
State-wise figures for the construction of girls' toilets show Chandigarh, Delhi, and Goa have reported 100% coverage through the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan. On paper, the numbers are reassuring. On the ground, they raise questions like who is maintaining these toilets?
There is no publicly available comprehensive State-wise data on the posts of cleanliness workers in government schools. The Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) tracks school infrastructure, toilets, drinking water, and classrooms. Datasets such as the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) focus on learning outcomes and teacher availability. The non-teaching staff, like cleanliness workers, though, remain largely untracked.
National programmes such as Swachh Bharat, Swachh Vidyalaya and Samagra Shiksha mandate water, cleanliness and hygiene (WASH) standards in schools, emphasising toilet construction, handwashing facilities and scheduled cleaning. Yet none of these frameworks clearly define or mandate sanctioned cleanliness worker posts within schools.
Cleanliness worker positions in government schools are typically managed at the State or district level, either through education departments, municipal bodies or outsourced private agencies, because there is no centralised national portal tracking vacancies, appointments or salaries.
Anecdotal and field-based evidence from areas such as Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra suggests that unfilled cleanliness posts routinely force teachers, cooks and even students to clean classrooms and toilets or to leave facilities locked, filthy and unusable.
In many States, cleaning duties are outsourced to third-party contractors who hire workers at extremely low wages, says Advocate and Right to Education (RTE) activist, Ashok Agarwal. He elaborates on one such case of Delhi's where the municipal corporation hires a third party to hire a team of cleanliness workers in Municipal Corporation of Delhi schools. “Cleanliness workers are paid ₹24,000–₹25,000 annually, roughly ₹2,000 a month, excluding break months, with no job security or formal recognition. By the time the government's allocation passes through middleman commissions or the agency overheads, the amount reaching the worker is often reduced to a pittance”, he says.
For example, a Haryana government portal listed over 1,000 ‘safai karmachari' vacancies in August 2024 under a local nigam, but none were explicitly linked to government schools, underscoring the ambiguity around responsibility.
The consequences are visible on the ground. In Pune's Panshet district, the Panshet Model Cluster School functions without a single cleanliness worker to clean classrooms or toilets. The headmistress, Ms. Shabana Khan told that she has often cleaned the classrooms herself or been forced to ask the mid-day meal cook to keep the toilets usable.
Workers associated with the Bharatiya Gram Vikas Sangh (BGVS) in Maharashtra and Jharkhand, Mr. Ashok Gaikwad and Mr Kashinath, confirmed that there are no formal sanctions or State-level allocations for cleanliness workers in government schools in their regions. In Maharashtra, several government schools rely on volunteer workers or NGOs to appoint cleanliness workers, who are often paid a fixed pay of ₹2,000 to 3000 per month, depending on the number of toilets, said Gaikwad.
The government school staffing norms clearly list posts such as principal, assistant teacher, lab attendant and librarian, but there is no sanctioned post for cleanliness workers, Gaikwad said. As a result, schools are forced to hire cleaners informally or outsource the work. He added that in many schools, even basic toilet facilities are missing. “Several schools do not have toilets within the campus, or are locked or filthy. Teachers and students are forced to use nearby buildings,” he said.
Mr. Gaikwad mentioned that the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funding is typically one-time in nature and cannot be used to pay salaries or recruit sanitation workers, nor can it ensure sustained water supply or long-term maintenance beyond creating basic infrastructure such as borewells and toilets.
Mr. Kashinath, who works closely with schools in Jharkhand, said that the posts for cleanliness workers are “never thought of as a needful designation because treated as secondary within the education system. He says, “The focus has always been on infrastructure, teachers, quality education, ration and other resources. Cleanliness workers were never seen as an essential part of a school.”
Despite the infrastructure figures presented in Parliament, the reality remains grim. Mr. Agarwal noted that the RTE mandates separate toilets for boys and girls in every school, additional units based on enrolment, functional handwashing facilities, and running water. He says,“Literacy or foundational education standards cannot be met through construction alone, especially when schools and systems lack human resources.”
Shanta Sinha, former Chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), said that girls' dropout is deeply rooted in social realities rather than infrastructure alone. Drawing from decades of work in education and child rights, she pointed out that girls often leave school due to early marriage, domestic responsibilities, gender-based violence, early pregnancy, poor health and restricted mobility. She says, “Education is seen as an escape from these conditions and girls go to school despite these barriers, not because systems have made it easy for them.”
While access to toilets and water is essential for dignity, Ms. Sinha cautioned against overstating infrastructure as the primary reason for girls' enrolment or retention. She argued that “disaggregated,” independent data is missing, noting that UDISE+ figures often fail to reflect ground realities. “If departments claim toilets are the reason girls attend school, that needs to be verified through surveys outside the system,” she said, adding that girls are fighting their way into education in spite of systemic neglect.
Speaking about sanitation in schools, Ms. Sinha said the practice of teachers and students cleaning classrooms has become normalised and institutionalised over time. She stressed that such systemic failures cannot be addressed through ad-hoc responses by individual headmasters or sarpanches. She argued for standardised, institutional solutions rather than leaving sanitation to local discretion.
Ms. Sinha mentioned that there is a need for investment in people, not just infrastructure, and called for an independent, accountable mechanism for the recruitment and management of cleanliness workers. “This responsibility must lie with the education department,” adding that essential functions like sanitation cannot depend on voluntary arrangements or temporary fixes.
“At community and school level, every school has faced this but who is listening?” Ms. Sinha said.
(Mantasha Ahmed is an independent journalist based in Indore with five years of experience. She reports on the critical intersections of education, civil rights, social issues, and culture.)
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Published - December 19, 2025 07:30 pm IST
education / school
Source: TheHindu
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