By Antonio Dey
Chief Education Officer, Saddam Hussein, yesterday said that the regional executive and education officers of Potaro-Siparuni failed to inform the Education Ministry of deficiencies at the Mahdia secondary school dorm.
The ministry official was at the time addressing the eighth hearing of the presidential inquiry into the Mahdia dormitory fire which claimed 20 lives. He also stated that despite the Ministry of Education’s commissioned UNICEF report where recommendations were made to the Guyana Fire Service, and regional executive and education officers for grills to be removed from the Mahdia dormitory, nothing was done in that regard.
CoI Chairman, Major General (Retired) Joseph Singh seemed taken aback by Hussain’s response and asked, “So don’t you think the Department of Education should have taken actions and ensured that this was done considering the fact that there were no fire prevention methods prior to the fire?”
The Education Officer firmly replied that the Department of Education in Region Four has no say on how things should be in Region Eight as that region’s education department is entrusted with those responsibilities.
According to him, at no point did the Regional Education Officers (REOs) indicate a need for the grills to be removed or the installation of fire prevention equipment such as smoke detectors and alarms as was referenced in Sub-officer Ryan Scott’s after-action report which outlined the deficiencies at the Mahdia school dorm as well as it’s fire station.
Hussain informed the CoI that the Mahdia Secondary School female dormitory was not among the five dormitories that were listed for urgent renovation.
“There are 24 dormitory facilities and the top five which needed fixing were identified by the engineering firm that did the report for the Ministry of Education. Mahdia was not in that five… which means that it was not as urgent as some of the others,” he added.
“If you examine the costing of some of the repairs, that made a lot of sense. There are dorms that needed, in some cases $222 million, to repair like Sand Creek. There are some dorms that require $180 million, Anna Regina which is being done currently, and so on… Mahdia dorms repair [was a] small amount, $90 million.”
Hussain, who was the former Mathematics Department Head at Stewartville Secondary School disclosed that there was a previous Commission of Inquiry into the education system, under the David Granger administration in 2015 where the deficiencies at several school dorms were highlighted but never rectified.
Hussein also alluded to UNICEF’s recent report which pointed out issues at dormitories across the country.
He told the inquiry that the critical issues were lack of firefighting equipment, poor infrastructure, and staffing.
“The dorms did not become what they are in 2020. It was a long series of neglect which positions the dorms where they are,” the Chief Education Officer posited.
Asked what the current education ministry did to remedy the situation in light of the blame being cast on former Education Minister under the APNU+AFC government, Dr Rupert Roopnaraine, Hussain said that “as part of the education sector plan from 2021 to 2025 the Ministry of Education took a decision to take a look into the dorms.”
According to him following a meeting between himself and education representatives, the majority of the school dormitories are now equipped with the necessary amenities [except the Mahdia school dorm which was gutted].
He told the commission that an email was copied to him in relation to the ministry’s resolution based on UNICEF’s report which outlined the dire need for corrective measures to be taken at several school dorms.
Asked by attorney-at-law and commissioner, Kim Kyte-Thomas, about the status of these corrective measures, Hussain said roughly $882 million dollars has been expended on fixing dorms across the country.
“Every single dormitory is outfitted with firefighting equipment and tools. I am happy to say that more than 70 per cent of all dorms have started rehabilitation or would have completed rehabilitation and… before the first quarter of next year, that would be completed. I am also happy to say that staffing in the dorms except for Region Two, has been completed.”
“More than 70 per cent of the dorms are either under construction or would have completed construction.”
The inquiry was also informed of instances where the rehabilitation of some dormitories came to a halt due to the closure of the facilities.
The media was subsequently asked to be excused from the remainder of Hussein’s testimony which was conducted in camera.
Uninformed
Meanwhile, former Permanent Secretary of the Home Affairs Ministry, Mae Toussaint Jr Thomas, said that the ministry was unaware of the deficiencies and absence of critical firefighting utilities at the Mahdia Fire Station in Region Eight.
However, in the same breath, she said that efforts were made to ensure that these issues were “immediately” resolved.
Like the Chief Education Officer, the former Permanent Secretary appeared at the CoI after receiving a summons which was issued recently by the Commission after failing to show up on the required date to offer testimonies.
Her testimony was based on reactions to Fire Chief (ag), Gregory Wickham and the officer in charge of the Mahdia Fire Station, Ryan Scott, who in their testimonies lamented a lack of human and technical resources at the facility which hindered their effectiveness to the tragedy
She said that these issues could have been rectified considering the Home Affairs Ministry’s 24-hour open-door policy which caters for emergencies and would accommodate the head of the agencies at any given time.
“Each agency, in this particular instance, the Fire Chief, they have to tell us what is required of their agency and once it is there…we will take it to the Ministry of Finance and we will defend it at the level of Parliament,” Thomas contended.
Wickham in his testimony had said that the Mahdia fire station did not have fundamental firefighting tools such as breathing apparatuses and welding tools.
He explained that the fire service was not able to acquire them due to budgetary constraints at the time.
She noted that while there were instances of budget reductions at the ministry’s level, funding was never the problem as she believed GFS should have prioritized.
The former Permanent Secretary who was reassigned to the Labour Ministry explained that if there was an instance where funds were not available at any given time, there was always an alternative for a supplementary budget to be explored.
On this note, she maintained that the ministry was never informed of the need for firefighting tools in Mahdia.
“If there is a need for them to go to supplementary, they would go to supplementary. Whatever any of the agencies were lacking under the ministry, saying that we don’t have funds was only one way out,” Thomas said.
Months prior to the fire, an inspection was conducted at the dormitory after which a number of recommendations were made for actions to be taken, including the installation of fire safety and prevention mechanisms.
This report, according to the Officer in Charge of the Mahdia Fire Station, was submitted to the relevant authorities, which saw no action taken in that regard.
Thomas said at no point was this report brought to her attention.
“At present, I don’t recall seeing this exact report or with a note to myself…I also noticed that it is not CC (copied) to me,” she said.
“If the matter was brought to my attention, I would have taken immediate action and I probably would have written to my colleague PS (Permanent Secretary) at Ministry of Education …and Minister Benn…for actions to be taken,” Thomas noted.
The inquiry’s chair asked if the relevant authorities were tasked with ensuring that these irregularities were addressed, to which Thomas said it was the Chief Fire Officer [Gregory Wickham]
“The Head Office (Ministry) would have depended on the agency to bring to our attention ‘we need this’…The Fire Service does [have] a reasonable amount of allocation to their current line that could buy some of these items,” Thomas contended.
She informed the inquiry that up to a few months ago, the Fire Service was operating at three-quarters of the required staffing capacity.
The 9th public hearing of the Presidential COI is slated for tomorrow at 10am.
