Most of them were complaints. They were not about the nonavailability of places for their children in schools, nor about the long distance between the school and home, but about the dirty toilets in the schools.
They said besides being dirty, the toilets also were foul-smelling. They claimed that their children did not use these toilets during their entire stay at school. And not being able to relieve themselves for long hours made them sick.
A father wrote that his daughter was studying at a school that had 400 girl students and only three toilets!
Another problem, the parents said, was that the toilets were old and many on the verge of breaking. They also said the water supply was repeatedly cut and there were no means for cleaning or sterilization. What made things worse, they added, was that the janitors would not bother to clean the toilets during the entire school hours. Who is responsible for this? How come cleaning has become a problem in our Muslim society, while Islam made cleanliness part of the faith? A Hadith of the Prophet (PBUH) says: “Cleanliness is part of the faith.”
The lack of cleanliness, the stink, the repeated water cuts, and the lack of sterilizers make the spread of diseases among students easy.
According to statistics of the Health Ministry, there are 679 school-age children infected with hepatitis A, 72 children with hepatitis B, and 37 with hepatitis C. They also say that 537 elementary school students are suffering from contagious parasitical enteric diseases as a result of polluted water and bad food.
The danger of catching epidemic diseases becomes greater during the times of Haj and Umrah, especially in Makkah and Madinah.
I know we face a shortage in the number of doctors specializing in epidemics. This situation is made worse by the lack of cleanliness in schools.
