Thursday, January 31, 2013

Community-Built Schools to be assessed for Earthquake resilience: Education Ministry’s Good Step Ahead

Over many years I have been wondering to what extent the community-built primary and community schools was earthquake resilient. This is because when such schools were built, no engineers were involved. And obviously no calculations. It was built by the local people who lacked scientific knowledge and experience of natural disasters such as earthquakes. In precise, what they required, after all, was just the roof over their heads. So they cracked boulders and chopped woods to stand a so-called ‘building’.

Although these buildings stood to shelter many children, they also posed great danger to their safety. It was found that the worst affected during the 2009 and 2011 earthquakes were the community built schools. This shows how dangerous they are.

And this time around, the Ministry of education has come up with a program to assess the school buildings built by the community people. This is a plausible step towards providing our young learners a safe place to live and learn.

And in addition to this, there are many old buildings around the country that houses our students. It is time that we reconstruct and offer a better learning environment, which is conducive, to our learners.

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