A Broken Roof, a Ward Chair and a Child Club
The grade 9 and 10 block of a community secondary school in a Karnali municipality lost part of its roof in a Chaitra hailstorm. An engineer's estimate puts the repair at Rs 4,50,000, and the monsoon begins in Jestha. The head teacher wrote to the federal Ministry of Education three months ago and has had no reply. When the school management committee approached him, the ward chair said, 'Schools are the federal government's business. The ward has no budget for this.' The municipality does, however, have an education section and a budget approved by the municipal assembly, in which school physical infrastructure is a line item. A child club of twenty students, including two SEE candidates whose classroom is unusable, wants to act before the rains. The club has one week, no money of its own, and one teacher willing to advise them.
1. The ward chair says the school is the federal government's business. Explain where responsibility actually sits, and what the club should do with that answer.
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The ward chair has confused two things. Under the constitutional division of powers, school education up to the secondary level - including school infrastructure and management - is a local level function, listed in the local level's powers. The federal ministry sets national policy and runs national programmes; it does not repair one school's roof.
The ward, however, is a unit inside the municipality, not a separate tier of government. So the chair is factually right that the ward has no separate budget for this, and wrong to conclude that the federal government therefore owns the problem. The money sits one level up: the municipality's education section and the municipal assembly, which approves the education budget and already carries a school infrastructure line item.
What the club should do with this: stop waiting on Kathmandu and redirect the request - a written application from the school management committee and the child club to the municipality's education section, attaching the Rs 4,50,000 estimate, photographs of the damage and a note that the monsoon starts in Jestha, with a copy to the ward office so the ward chair is informed rather than bypassed.
2. Propose two concrete actions the club can take in one week, and one action that would waste the week. Justify each.
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Action 1 - a written, evidence-backed request with a deadline. A short letter to the municipal education officer, signed by the head teacher and the child club, with the engineer's estimate, dated photographs and a clear ask: either the full repair or emergency tarpaulin and a commitment in the next budget. Why it works: it turns a complaint into a file that an officer can act on, and it creates a dated record that can be followed up.
Action 2 - use the ward assembly and the school management committee. Ask for five minutes at the next ward assembly, and ask the management committee to release whatever school funds and community contributions it can for tarpaulin now. Why it works: it puts the issue in front of the body that can put pressure upward, and a temporary cover bought this week protects the classrooms while the file moves.
What would waste the week: collecting signatures on a general demand that names no office and no amount, or organising a protest outside the federal ministry. Neither produces a decision-maker, and both use up the days the club does not have.
3. The ward chair is annoyed at being contradicted in public. How should the students handle him, and which life skills are they practising?
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They should separate the person from the decision. The chair is not an opponent; he is a gatekeeper whose cooperation is needed for the ward assembly and for local contributions. So: go to him privately first, thank him for the point that the ward has no budget, agree with it explicitly, and then ask him to forward the file to the municipality with a covering recommendation. Give him a role in the solution rather than a defeat, and never correct him in front of the assembly - that turns an administrative problem into a personal one, and the students lose the room they need.
Life skills being practised: critical thinking (sorting what is true in his statement from what is wrong), problem solving (finding the level where the decision can actually be made), effective communication (written request, private meeting, asking rather than accusing), interpersonal relationship and empathy (not humiliating an adult who has publicly taken a position), and self-awareness and coping with stress (holding to a deadline without panicking or escalating). The test of the skill is that the roof gets fixed and the chair still signs the next letter.