Over 1000 students who had stopped going to school, due to deadly landslides
that hit three eastern Uganda villages, have today resumed classes in
a market place which has been turned into a school.
On the night of March 1st, 2010, three villages in Bududa district, 350 kms east of Kampala on the slopes of mountain Elgon, were hit by landslides that killed some 95 people, left over twenty people injured while burying more than 300.
Among those killed and buried by landslides were 50 students who were on their way home from school.
According to Uganda’s minister of state for disaster and refugees, Musa Echweru, the students who survived the landslides had been deprived of schooling since the natural disaster.
All those who survived were relocated into camps which had no school.
“Over 4000 people were relocated to Bulucheke camp. There has been no school in the camp but the local government in Bulucheke managed to sacrifice a local market to have a school set up,” Echweru said.
He also said that the market was turned into a school with stalls turned
into classrooms to accommodate the over 1000 students.
The government, according to the minister of state for disaster and refugees is doing its utmost to deliver all kinds of relief assistance to the affected people in the area as part of its responsibility.
Among the government’s plan, a total of 15,000 people are to be permanently relocated to other parts of the country so that they do not go back to landslides-prone areas.
