Here's why students from Coimbatore villages were forced to climb water tanks

1. About 1,000 students from seven villages in Coimbatore have been forced to climb water tanks and hills everyday ever since online classes began during the pandemic.

2. Since these school and college students from Kalingavaram, Mattampalli, Agraharam, Kodithimmanapalli, Javukkupallam, Thinnoor and Gurumurthi Kottai depended on their smartphones to participate in the online classes, the lack of a mobile tower in the area has been a huge problem for them.

3. With poor network connection, the students have been forced to find high perches which offer better chances of an uninterrupted class. Some students chose to climb hillocks while others climbed water tanks. 

4. R Karthik, a Class 9 student from Kalingavaram village, says, "We couldn’t get access to online classes due to poor connectivity from our houses because there is no cell phone tower in the area. That's why we had to climb atop water tanks to try and get better network connection. Sometimes, we also attend the class from nearby hills."

5. Some students can also be found perched on the stairs of the tank, as high as 25 feet. Parents have also expressed anguish that their wards were forced to miss out on online classes and they couldn’t perform well in online exams due to network connectivity problems. “Obviously they have also lost interest in learning,” said S Muthuvinayagam, a farmer.

6. The villagers claimed that they have been demanding to set up a cell phone tower in their village for a long time. They added that there have been instances when they couldn’t contact the 108 ambulance services during emergencies and lost lives due to the same problem.