Heritage KJP Girl’s School in Meghalaya reduced to ashes
The boarders residing in the adjacent building are all safe and have been temporarily shifted to the community hall of Mission Compound locality, officials said.
SHILLONG: A major fire broke out at the Khasi Jaintia Presbyterian Girls Higher Secondary school here in the early hours of Sunday, reducing the heritage building to ashes, police said on Sunday.
There was no report of any casualty in the fire, they said.
The woodwork frame of the school building built in the late 1800s aided the fire to spread and initial reports indicated that the fire broke out at around 2 am, the police said.
The boarders residing in the adjacent building are all safe and have been temporarily shifted to the community hall of Mission Compound locality, officials said.
Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma on Sunday announced Rs 1 crore compensation to the KJP Girls higher secondary school whose 131-year-old school building was reduced to ashes in the inferno.
The CM made the compensation announcement after visiting the damaged school building.
“From the CM development fund, I am releasing Rs 1 crore to ensure that the school comes back to life. They will have to decide on how to utilise the funds to rebuild the school,” Sangma said.
“I have met the principal and managing committee members and assured them that we will rebuild the school together,” he said.
Expressing sadness at the loss, the CM said, “This is a very sad and tragic incident. The destruction of the old infrastructure is a great loss for the school, the church and the community as a whole.”
Police said fire tenders were deployed from the headquarters here to fight the inferno and help save lives.
Being the only school for girls in the Northeast over a century ago, the KJP Girls’ Higher Secondary School celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2017.
The school was an offshoot of an erstwhile school established by the Welsh missionaries at Nongsawlia village in Sohra (erstwhile Cherrapunjee), where it was converted into a proper school in 1864.
The school became an exclusive school for girls in 1892 when a missionary of the Welsh Presbyterian Mission Society took over the administration of the school.
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