Public officials must take blame for fire deaths

Parents and guardians at Hillside Endarasha Academy in Kieni West, Nyeri, where 21 pupils died in a fire. [Kibata Kihu, Standard]

It is astonishing that no public resignations or sackings followed the fire accident that killed dozens of students at Hillside Endarasha Academy in Nyeri County.

In a normal country, senior officials in charge of fire safety at the county level should have resigned.

The same goes for higher-ups in charge of school inspections at the Ministry of Education.

It does not matter whether they were directly negligent or not. It does not matter that the school involved was private. The fact that something like this happened in and of itself signals failure.

And whenever there is failure of this proportion it is pertinent that people publicly take professional and political responsibility.

Just so we are clear, 21 children died in the accident. This was a failure of epic proportions. As a country we failed those children and their families.

And as long as we refuse to adopt a culture of responsibility, we shall continue to fail even more children.

Which says a great deal about toxicity of our culture.

What sort of people watch their kids perish in this manner and not demand a radical rethink of how we manage safety in our boarding schools?

What sort of society goes through this without expectation that senior people in government will take responsibility?

Immediately following the accident, there was an attempt to lay blame parents for sending their children to boarding school. What madness?

The mere existence of boarding schools did not cause the fire, or prevent relevant authorities from ensuring fire safety protocols are observed.

Indeed, many day schools would likely fail a serious fire inspection.

While there is room to debate whether we should, as a society, reconsider mainstreaming of boarding schools, this is not the time.

Fire safety and accountability should dominate the discussion.

We must not become numb to senseless loss of life, especially among the most vulnerable. It is tempting to give in to cynicism.

Indeed, only a few years ago, the government cavalierly handled deaths in a girls’ boarding school allegedly from food poisoning. Then as now, nobody senior took responsibility. And the country moved on.

Which is a big shame. We deserve better. And the first step in the direction of being kinder to our children is by ensuring whenever catastrophic failures happen, people in charge take professional and political accountability.

-The writer is a professor at Georgetown University