KENYA: Dorm fire that killed 8 students caused by arson, minister says

The weekend fire that killed eight at Moi Girls Boarding School Nairobi was sparked by an arsonist, so says Kenya’s education minister, Fred Matiang‘i who also revealed that there had been similar attacks on other schools around the country.

According to the minister, some arson attacks had been related to fights over staff appointments in schools, where senior positions can bring financial rewards.

“It was not an accident, it was arson,” Matiang‘i said of the blaze on Saturday at Moi Girls School in the capital in which nine girls were killed and 10 injured.

Matiang‘i said there had been a spate of arson attacks on schools around the country, including in the coastal city of Mombasa and the western city of Kisumu. He did not give the total number of attacks.

Read also: Eight girls burnt t death in Kenya school dorm fire

“Some of the fires we have faced before in the sector are related to that kind of thing, politicization of school headship, politicization of responsibility in the education sector. It is not right,” he said in a televised press conference.

“We cannot resolve a conflict on the headship of the school by burning a school,” the minister added.

More than 120 schools around the country were set on fire last year, according to research by a Canadian professor. Almost none of the cases has been successfully prosecuted.

 

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