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In our last newsletter, we told you about two of our Senior Consultants, Dr Alex Hills and Dave Black who were set to travel to Uganda to provide realistic risk assessments of fire dangers at schools across the country together with some effective control measures on behalf of the Uganda Safety Council (USC).
Boarding schools are common in Uganda, but unfortunately there are some poorly-managed health & safety risks and this combined with a high rate of arson attacks has led to a spate of fires and a significant loss of life. |
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In the last year, at least 84 schools were gutted by fire which destroyed property and claimed several lives. The Budo Junior School (above) inferno saw the total destruction of the school and at least 20 pupils perished.
In a 2008 police report released in March, police boss Maj. Gen. Kayihura attributed most of the fires to arson by delinquent students and described the spreading of the fires from school to school as "copy-cat crimes".
The Ugandan Ministry of Education has been working with the USC which appointed Connaught Compliance Training Services to provide risk assessments and a report detailing realistic and achievable changes that can improve the chances of pupils escaping in the event of fires.
Alex and Dave travelled to Uganda in February, visiting a number of schools of varying quality and type to assess the changes that should be made. Alex Hills commented:
"Many of the schools were unaware of the dangers caused by mattresses stored in bulk next to dormitories, which were a terrible hazard, and bunk beds blocking doors. Quite often, dormitories were locked from the outside to control comings and goings, which led to significant problems with emergency escapes. In addition students often sleep in triple bunks, stacked side by side and there were no fire drills. These factors combined mean that if and when fire happens, it can spread quickly with insufficient warning and little time or means of escape."
Standards relating to the management of health & safety (including fire risk) have been developed and the next stage of the project is to develop a 'train the trainer' course for persons nominated by schools as safety representatives. Alex and Dave are expected to return to roll out this training.
It is hoped that this will lead to further work assisting the Ministry of Labour in Uganda to improve national health & safety standards, as the country develops industrially.
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