Precious Talents tragedy: Who’s to blame for what?

When the one-storey classroom building at Precious Talents Academy in Dagoretti South went down at dawn on Monday, seven lives were lost, more than 60 learners were injured while hundreds of others were left with trauma to deal with for the rest of their lives.

At the scene of the tragedy in Ngando area along Ngong Road, officials from different government agencies and the city county government put up an embarrassing orchestra of blame games, with no one seeming to take responsibility for the disaster.

So, who is liable for this tragic loss? Who did or did not do what?

School owner

• He is responsible for putting leaners in a dangerous structure that was structurally unsound.
• The one-storey building— which housed classes Two, Three, Four and Eight— was supported by weak wooden and steel pillars that could not sustain the weight of the learners.
• The upper concrete floor was held together by wire mesh (not meant for construction) and wooden blocks.
• The building also had a shallow foundation, and had no column.
• Even after learners reported that the building was shaking, the administration failed to act upon the complaints.
• Standard Eight learners had to seal-off crevices in the ceiling using papers to keep off dust that would trickle into their class.
• Parents who spoke to Nation say different concerns about the welfare of their children were usually brushed off by the school managers.
• Soon after the tragedy, Mr Wainaina blamed Nairobi City County officials for digging a sewer line behind the ill-fated building, claiming it had weakened its stability.
• His efforts to address irate parents were futile, as they shouted him down. He was later whisked away to safety by the police.

Ministry of Education officials

• Questions linger on why officials from the ministry allowed the school to operate even with the glaring deficiencies and dangers posed by its unfit structures.
• From overcrowded classrooms to lack of enough toilets and a tiny playground and, the school failed to meet the most basic requirements for a primary school.
• The centre has no fence, putting schoolchildren’s safety in jeopardy.
• Education inspectors should have flagged down this irregularity, yet they did nothing.
• The school is one of the many private institutions in the densely populated Ngando Ward, which has no public primary schools.
• Why the ministry has not put up schools there is a touchy matter that no government official seemed ready to answer.

National Building Inspectorate and Nairobi City County government

• National Buildings Inspectorate (NBI) secretary Moses Nyakiongora termed the school building a structural failure and a death trap yet his officers failed to inspect it.
• Mr Nyakiongora also admitted that his officers were not aware of the existence of the building.
• Nairobi County Governor Mike Sonko blamed the tragedy on rampant corruption at City Hall, suggesting that approvals for the construction of the structure might have been irregular.

Local leadership

• Residents of Ngando Ward claimed that their leaders had abandoned them.
• It’s no wonder then that Dagoretti South MP John Kiarie and Ngando ward MCA Peter Wahinya were booed by the residents when they tried to address them.
• The two had to be led away by the police when angry residents threatened to attack them.
• Mr Kiarie, commonly known as JK, has been area MP for two years now, but residents claim he has not fought to have the government establish a public school in the area.
• Meshack Nyabuto, an administrator at the local chief’s office, said that the chief was aware of the unfit classroom building, and had recently raised the matter with the school.
• Mr Nyabuto though admitted that the chief’s office had not followed up the issue with the school, until the building came down on Monday morning.

Teachers

• At the time of the accident, minutes before 7am on Monday, there were no teachers at the school. Learners were going about their morning preps on their own.
• That the teachers failed to speak out about the 6am reporting time at the school, which is in outright contravention of the rules of the Ministry of Education, makes them liable too.
• Perhaps even more importantly, why didn’t they take the school management to task about the unsafe classrooms that not only put the lives of learners at risk but their own as well?

• Parents

• Some parents such as David Maruti were disappointed by the school’s perpetual failure to act upon their concerns on safety of their children. Disappointed, he transferred his children to a different school early this year. That’s how they survived the disaster.
• Other parents were not as lucky as he was.
• But why would parents allow their children to attend a school whose structures risked their lives?
• Why didn’t they take action when their children complained about the shaking structure? Had they raised their concerns with the relevant authorities?
• While fingers are being pointed in all other directions, parents are also liable for this omission.

School neighbours

• The school has hundreds of neighbours, some who interact freely with the school, owing to the lack of a fence around the institution.
• The majority of learners at Precious Talents Academy hail from this same Ngando neighbourhood.
• That the ill-fated school building was a work of outrageously poor workmanship was a fact well known to them.
• As a responsible community, they should have voiced their concerns and piled pressure on the school management to be responsible.
• Had they acted accordingly, no one would have been hurt. Yet they remained silent as the clock ticked to the Monday morning disaster.