RIYADH, 16 March — Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, has urged the authorities to take immediate action to prevent a repeat of the kind of tragedy that hit a Makkah school, in which 14 girls died and 52 were injured.
“What happened at the Intermediate Girls’ School No. 31 in Makkah on Monday is unacceptable,” the crown prince said in an urgent message to Prince Sultan, second deputy premier and minister of defense and aviation and chairman of the Higher Ministerial Committee.
He threatened to take action against “negligent, incompetent and careless” officials, and ordered that teams be sent immediately to inspect all school buildings. “The lives of schoolchildren are entrusted to us and we will not tolerate any negligence in this regard,” he warned.
He ordered the ministerial committee to hold a meeting immediately in the presence of the ministers of higher education, education and finance, as well as the chief of the Presidency of Girls’ Education (PGE), to discuss urgent solutions to the problem of school and university buildings on the verge of collapse. He also urged the officials to keep him updated with the measures taken in this regard.
“We have to confront the school tragedy and work out solutions to prevent a repeat of such incidents,” said the message, a copy of which was sent to the ministers of education and higher education and the PGE chief.
“If the buildings are found unsuitable, they should be replaced by new ones with the same allocations. Same policy should be applied to school and college buildings owned by the state,” the message explained.
Prince Abdullah ordered the ministerial committee to study offers by Saudi businessmen to construct schools on a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) basis.
The Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority last year granted two foreign companies a $3.5-billion scheme to build some 10,000 schools on the same basis. Unofficial estimates indicate the Kingdom needs $11 billion to build schools for some 2.4 million girl students, and a similar amount for boys.
The school tragedy has sparked a rare political debate in the Kingdom with intellectuals, parents and the press calling for the resignation of the bureaucrats responsible.
There was also a concerted campaign in the local press in which top education officials were accused of incompetence and corruption. The press pointed fingers of accusation at the Commission for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice on grounds that they obstructed rescue operations.
The girls, aged between 13 and 17, were trampled to death while trying to escape after a fire broke out at the four-story school building located in a narrow area in Makkah’s Hindawiya district.
The high death toll was attributed to the lack of safety precautions in the school building, one of several thousand rented by the state for education purposes.
The press also charged that officials from the commission prevented Civil Defense men and other male volunteers from entering the school to rescue the girls for fear of “exposing females to male strangers.”
The commission has denied the charges, but several newspapers quoted schoolgirls and eyewitnesses as claiming they did indeed hamper rescue efforts and “contributed to the casualties.”
Analysts believe that the Saudi media have played an important role in highlighting the school tragedy, reflecting a new trend of “openness” in the Kingdom in the wake of the terror attacks on the United States.
“We should grant the media an award in recognition of the patriotic role” it played in covering the Makkah tragedy, wrote Ihsan Bu-Haliga, a member of the Shoura Council, in Al-Eqtisadiah business daily, an Arab News sister publication.
Bu-Haliga said the extensive press coverage of the disaster has made every home in Saudi Arabia share the loss.
