- No lessons learnt on deaths at verification centres
It’s certainly a familiar narrative, and this compounds the tragedy because it suggests that the lessons of similar tragedies in the past were not learnt. It is always doubly tragic when preventable death occurs because it could have been prevented.
An April 6 report said: “Two pregnant women collapsed and died in Bauchi on Tuesday while waiting to be screened by the verification team from the Office of the Accountant-General of the Bauchi State government. The two pregnant women were among the about 6,000 teachers in the state who were asked to assemble at the state government education secretariat for screening before collecting their salaries”.
An eyewitness was quoted as saying that “the first woman who was about seven months pregnant, fainted when the crowd were pushing to be verified, a situation that triggered a congestion during the exercise”.
With proper planning and organisation, there should have been effective crowd management rather than the disastrous congestion that caused death. The eyewitness further said: “We all assembled at the local government education authority to be verified because we have not been paid for three months. People came from the local government areas of the state so there was a massive crowd that gathered at the venue.”
The eyewitness painted a picture that suggested lack of planning: “The verification exercise took us by surprise because we were in the classroom teaching when we were called upon to be screened. That was why there was a large turnout of people” The alleged suddenness of the exercise was untidy, and reflected unsystematic thinking.
The method was not only unimaginative; it was, paradoxically, designed to bring trouble. The consequences of this pedestrian approach are too weighty to be trivialised by fatalistic philosophising. The deaths happened in material conditions and can be explained in material terms. Indeed, it could be described as a disaster waiting to happen.
The eyewitness said: “Some of the people who came early were lucky enough to be verified, but as the crowd kept increasing, people began to push each other, not minding who was standing close. In the process, an unidentified pregnant woman fainted and went into a coma.”
Another eyewitness, Abubakar Yusuf, was quoted as saying: “As we were yet to recover from the tragic incident that befell the first woman teacher, another pregnant woman collapsed and had a miscarriage instantly. The two pregnant women were rushed to the hospital for treatment. We later heard that they died.”
Who organised this unorganised exercise? It was bad enough that the victims died; the deaths were even more tragic because of the victims’ pregnancies, which meant that even the unborn also died.
Given the circumstances of the deaths, it makes sense to demand compensation even while acknowledging that life is priceless. The families of the victims ought to pursue the matter of compensation in order to make the point that every life is important. Furthermore, public-spirited lawyers can take up the case in the larger interest of society, and insist not only on compensation for the affected families but also on punishment for those that should have acted to prevent the deaths.
It is lamentable that teachers are made to experience hell on earth in the name of verification exercises. There should be more decent alternative methods that would not lead to suffering and death of workers.
Moreover, it is high time people got punished for the acts of commission or omission that result in such wastage of life. To insist on some form of retribution in this case is in line with the concept of justice and the imposition of sanctions should help to prevent the preventable.
