KARACHI, 18 September 2008 (IRIN) - On 11 September, four boys were killed when the wall of a school building in Karachi collapsed. The Federal Government Public School had been re-housed six years ago in a new structure but the dilapidated old building had been left standing.

"We had asked the school administration to get it demolished as it presented a threat," said Nisar Ahmed, father of one of the boys. Other residents blamed the military-run Manora Cantonment Board for failing to ensure the abandoned building was safely levelled.

"It was an accident," said Nasir-ul-Hassan, the police station house officer in whose jurisdiction the school fell.

The incident has focused renewed attention on the state of school buildings in Pakistan, and the potential threat they pose to thousands of children.

The federal government's Economic Survey for 2007-2008 (www.finance.gov.pk) stated that 5.7 percent of the 164,579 public sector educational institutions were in a "dangerous condition". Another 42.7 percent required "major or minor repairs".

About 37.8 percent of schools in the public sector lacked a boundary wall, 32.3 percent did not have drinking water, 56.4 percent were without electricity, 40.5 percent without latrines and 6.8 percent without buildings, the same report said.

"My two small daughters go to a government school where there is no boundary wall, where pieces of cement fall from the roof when it rains and where there is no toilet facility. After hearing about the incident at Manora, I fear for their safety," says Sumera Bibi, 30, from the town of Mirpur Sakhro in Sindh's coastal Thatta district.

The issue of the safety of school buildings was first raised after 17,000 children were killed when 7,000 schools collapsed in the 2005 earthquake that hit northern areas of Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Activists, such as Bushra Gohar, director of the Human Resource Management and Development Centre, based in Peshawar, capital of the North Western Frontier Province (NWFP), blamed "shoddy materials" as a key factor.

School Safety Conference

The post-quake findings regarding school safety were highlighted at a three-day international conference on school safety in Islamabad held in May.

The conference built on calls by a growing international coalition of engineers, community activists, quake specialists and disaster relief workers for schools to be made more quake-resistant.

Salvano Briceno, director of the Secretariat of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, said at the conference "schools, hospitals and other critical infrastructures need to be systematically upgraded and retrofitted in earthquake-prone areas if we want to save lives".

The report (www.schoolsafetyconference.org) prepared after the conference called for immediate measures to improve the resilience of school structures, particularly in quake-prone areas.

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