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Mbarara High School students sent home
Students of Mbarara High School were yesterday sent home after one of their dormitories was burnt. Photo by Felix Ainebyoona
MBARARA. More than 1,200 students of Mbarara High School were yesterday sent home following the burning of one of the dormitories on Sunday night.
Fire gutted Addis Ababa Dormitory at around 9pm while the students were in class reading, destroying property of 102 students. Police are investigating the matter. The dormitory housed boys from across the classes.
The school was scheduled to begin end of first term exams yesterday.
The headmaster, Mr Benon Twinomujuni, called in the police to rescue the students’ property although almost everything in the four rooms had been destroyed by the time the fire fighters arrived and gained access.
Police, however, prevented fire from spreading to other buildings. “We have not yet established the cause of the fire, we have left it to the police fire brigade who are the experts to investigate and tell us the findings,” Mr Twinomujuni told journalists yesterday.
There are three weeks left to the end of the first term. Rwizi Region Field Force police commander Collins Kaganzi who led fire brigade said they found the four rooms of the dormitory block locked and had to break-in in an attempt to save the property.
The security guard who was supposed to be around was out of the school at the time. He has been arrested to help with investigations into the fire outbreak. The school administrators normally lock dormitories to compel students to go for night preps and safe guard their property.
“I received a call from the headmaster at 9pm telling me that Addis Ababa Dormitory has caught fire, I immediately came to the scene and found the dormitory locked, we had to break the doors since the Askari who was in charge of the dormitory was not around and he is the one who had locked the place,” Mr Kaganzi said.
He added, “When I called him [the guard], he told me that he was at his wife’s place, we have arrested him to tell us how the fire broke out. If he was around we would have been able to rescue some of the property. He is going to help us in carrying out the investigations into the incident.”
Earlier in the morning, Mr Twinomujuni told journalists that they would suspend end of term exams and carry on with teaching and other school activities until end of the term.
However, the stakeholders meeting convened in the afternoon attended by security officials, church leaders, administrators and students resolved to send home Senior One, Two, Three and Five students. Those in Senior Four and Six remained. “Students failed to agree with school administration on remaining at the school after they have lost their property, so they have been sent home,” said Mr Kaganzi.
One of the student leaders who spoke to Daily Monitor about the incident but asked to remain anonymous said: “We were in our usual night preps preparing for the coming end of term examinations that were starting today (Monday) and students’ leaders were in a meeting at the office of the headprefect at around 8.30pm. After the meeting we went back to preps but around 9pm there was power blackout in the whole school which is rare, then some guys came later running saying there was smoke in the extreme end of the school in Addis Ababa dormitory. We went there and there were flames. We had to immediately inform school authorities that called police fire brigade but our textbooks, mattresses, dissection kits for biology, clothes could not be rescued since the dormitory was locked.’’
