Ministry has failed us on security of our children, say parents

Kenya: Students in most government learning institutions remain highly vulnerable in times of emergencies due to lack of appropriate safety and security guidelines for schools.

The government has subsequently been put on the spot for making half-hearted attempts to address the situation while overlooking more comprehensive proposals by stakeholders.

In a legal notice published on April 8, the Ministry of Education published new safety regulations with the key highlight that all doors in schools should open from the outside while windows should have no grills.

The Basic Education Regulations, 2015, which targets pre-primary, primary and secondary schools as well as middle-level colleges, stipulates that regular fire disaster response drills be conducted by all stakeholders in readiness for fire and other disasters.

All institutions are required to fit functional fire extinguishers and alarm systems and also fence off compounds.

Notably though, the government is yet to address many critical issues raised by stakeholders.

“The truth of the matter is that the Ministry of Education has failed on security of our children. We do not have a proper national disaster policy in education,” said Musau Ndunda, the secretary general, Kenya National Association of Parents (Knap).

Ndunda dismissed the new regulations as “very shallow” and warned that students in public primary, secondary and tertiary learning institutions remain sitting ducks in case of emergencies.

“They have no skills whatsoever to handle such eventualities, yet we are doing nothing to improve the situation. We particularly need a policy to address preparedness,” he said.

“As a country, we are in total danger as long as students are not inducted in safety measures and continue to be guarded by unskilled and poorly equipped private guards,” he said.

In 2013, Knap released findings of a survey conducted in more than 5,000 primary and secondary schools, which showed that 97 per cent of the institutions direly lacked safety and security mechanisms.

Ndunda lamented that the report, which was officially shared with the government, was ignored.

“We made the presentation to the ministry in Naivasha, but they sent us some very junior officers who could not influence anything and the issue died there,” he charged.

He suggested that Parliament comes up with legislation that will comprehensively tackle the issue of safety in schools.

The lack of proper emergency exits has come under close scrutiny in recent days following the deadly terror attack on Garissa University College and the terror scare at the University of Nairobi’s Kikuyu campus.

Ndunda calls for all learning institutions to introduce evacuation and emergency lessons for all students during orientation to be complemented by random and regular emergency drills.