WARNING: The pictures contained in this post may be disturbing for some.
Poetic justice is … what happened in Nnalya on Wednesday.
Don’t get me wrong; I think that a four-storey building collapsing on a group of semi-skilled workers and killing at 12 of them is a tragedy. The loss of life at St. Peter’s Secondary School in Nnalya was totally unnecessary. I feel for their families who have lost the only bread winners. I feel for their children who will never grow up to know their fathers. I feel for their wives and the long journey of grief and loneliness ahead of them.
I don’t take the death of these men lightly at all. I was horrified to witness the mangled bodies being pulled out of the rubble. Today, when a foot of one of the dead men was found, I felt a sharp pain run through my stomach. I imagined the agony of the man’s death and the futility of his passing.
I am angry. Angry that since the construction of the dormitory building started in February last year no alarms bells went off regarding the shoddy construction. No one said anything about the skimping on cement, the use of poor wet timber, the lack of a solid foundation, the thin ring beams and the low grade iron bars. None of the ‘educated’ parents with children at the school raised doubts when they were taken around the site late last year. No one asked who the site engineer was, who the contractors were and why the mandatory signage at the building site was missing.
I am especially angry that this afternoon Michael Werikhe, the State Minister for Lands and Urban Development, shirked from his responsibility. “Government is not to blame,” he said. “It’s those guys you elected into office at Local Council level. They’re the one’s who are corruptible and are not doing their jobs.”
Still, I can’t help but wonder if the collapse of this building has something to do with things unseen. Bad Karma. Poetic justice, if you will.
In December, I wrote about the unbelievable illegal exhumation of bodies by Kampala City Council (KCC) at the Lugogo Cemetery. I could not … cannot understand how little respect KCC has for the people it purports to serve. The fact that they would desecrate dead bodies so blatantly and justify it with arguments for the need for yet another apartment block and shopping center is beyond my comprehension.
Now it appears that our friends at City Hall aren’t the only ones grabbing land and desecrating bodies.
Following below are a few pictures of graves at a family cemetery that was located on land which St. Peter’s Secondary School is reported to have ‘unlawfully’ acquired. The grave stones were carelessly knocked aside, bodies carelessly exhumed and dumped at an unknown location and this was on the same plot of land that the collapsed building was located. In fact the grave yard was less than 20 meters away from the new dorm.
No one from the affected family was willing to speak to me on record about the desecrated graveyard. They whispered about being paid to look the other way and being threatened into silence. Neither the school management nor the owner, Dominic Kavutse, were willing to comment.
Today, three people were rescued alive from the rubble. One of the men died shortly after his arrival at hospital. It was an unbelievably meaningless death and someone should pay. Someone should pay a lot. I propose the Kira Town Council authorities for choosing to ignore the evident building faults and looking the other way. I propose the school parents’ committee for not caring enough to take the time to inspect a dormitory that would house their children. I propose the school administration for rushing the workers to finish the building, no matter what, in time for the new school term.
I propose Dominic Kavutse because Karma is a vengful witch.
