EDUCATION – Classroom Sanitation

In a classroom, where a number of students come together for hours, even a minor lapse in maintaining hygiene could lead to contamination and widespread health concerns. At the International Institute of Maritime Studies (IIMS) in Mumbai, Director Capt. N.N. Dholakia works overtime to implement his initial micro-plan and the eventual Plan of Action (PoA) to ensure classrooms remain safe and sound.

Classroom maintenance requires micro-sanitation and action plans at the management level to ensure that the health conditions of students are not put into jeopardy. Besides scheduling and implementing the cleaning programme, there should be a responsible person making checks at each point. Thus, the PoA needs to be transformed into an interdisciplinary work plan.

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“Monitoring not only keeps a check on the progress but also allows for continuous improvement of the hygiene/sanitation measures. The action should be taken from the lowest possible level with crosschecks to make sure that the sanitation situation remains in order. We invest in maintaining clean toilets, providing safe drinking water, creating clean surroundings and also providing information on hygiene.

“Thus, Class Room Sanitation & Hygiene refers to a combination of hardware and software components that are necessary to create a healthy school environment. The hardware components include clean drinking water, hand washing facility and proper excreta disposal besides solid waste disposal facilities in and around the school compound. The software components are activities that promote conditions at school and practices of school staff & children to prevent water and sanitation-related diseases.

“At IIMS, the janitorial department is responsible for the general cleaning of classrooms and bathrooms usually done at the end of the day. Concerns about inadequate cleaning by the janitorial staff are reported to the college management and a sanitation checklist is prepared. Food-safe sanitizer – Saniquat – is utilised in kitchen area by first cleaning (spray and wipe) and then spraying (spray and leave to air dry for 10 minutes).”