Kahna roof collapse exposes years of neglect 

Grieving families demand justice while Punjab scrambles to shut down 750 unregistered academies across the province

Friday was a day of grief in Kahna. Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif and Punjab Education Minister Rana Sikandar Hayat visited the area to meet the families of children who died while simply trying to get an education. Fourteen children lost their lives when the roof of a tuition centre collapsed on June 30. Around thirty children were sitting in class when the ceiling caved in and buried them under debris. Several others were injured.

Before the chief minister arrived, the whole area had been cleaned up and tightly controlled. Shops nearby were forced shut. Commandos stood on rooftops to guard her visit. The house chosen for her meeting with the grieving families did not even belong to one of the families who lost a child. It belonged to a man named Sarwar sahib, whose three relatives had died in the tragedy. The actual lanes where the tuition centre stood were too narrow and dingy for the chief minister’s convoy, so officials picked a more convenient house instead. For families burying their children, even grief was arranged around the comfort of the powerful.

Muhammad Qasim, one of the family members, said he lost three children in the tragedy. He named them as Muhammad Fawad, Muhammad Salman and Khadija, his brother’s children. They were between five and nine years old. Qasim said the chief minister showed compassion during the meeting. He said whoever was responsible for the tragedy should be held accountable and that justice must be given to the families. But he also said something striking. He did not want any action taken against the woman who ran the tuition centre, because she taught his children well. His anger was not aimed at the teacher. It was aimed at the system that let an unsafe building operate in the first place.

Another relative, Muhammad Asif, said Muhammad Fawad was his nephew and that he also lost a niece. He named the children one by one, and his grief was clear. When asked about the tuition centre’s fees and whether there had been any warning signs before the collapse, Asif defended the centre. He said the fees were reasonable and that there was no negligence on its part. The families were given two million rupees for each child who died and five hundred thousand rupees for every injured child. Money cannot bring back a nine year old.

This tragedy has once again exposed how badly Punjab regulates its schools. Thousands of tuition centres, private schools and coaching academies operate out of buildings that were never designed to hold classrooms full of children. Many of these buildings were originally built as homes. They are old, weak and were never checked for safety. They sit inside narrow lanes, cramped plazas and converted houses. Hundreds of children pass through their doors every single day, and in most cases, nobody from the government ever inspects them.

The question every parent in Kahna is now asking is simple. Was this building ever inspected before children were allowed to sit inside it. If it was inspected, why did nobody notice the danger. And if it was never inspected at all, then who was supposed to be doing that job. These are not new questions.

While the government was still struggling to respond to Kahna, another tragedy struck in Lahore’s Baghbanpura, claiming yet another young life. Eyewitnesses said the children were in the rear section of the building when it happened. Only after this second tragedy did the District Education Authority suspend four education officers. It took two disasters and many dead children before any official faced even administrative action.

It was only then that Rana Sikandar Hayat began speaking with more urgency. He met a Clean Punjab worker who was the first person to pull a dying child out from under a collapsed roof slab in Kahna, and he praised the worker’s bravery. During his visit, the father of one of the dead children shared memories of his son with the minister, and Rana Sikandar Hayat was seen in tears. He said he felt deep sorrow over what happened in both Kahna and Baghbanpura.

It was during this visit that the minister revealed just how badly the system had failed these children. He said the roof slab of the under construction building had been removed after only five days, when the rules required a wait of fifteen days. He admitted that an education officer had actually visited the school two weeks before the tragedy, but was simply told the owner was away on Hajj, and left it at that. The school had no No Objection Certificate. It had no building fitness certificate for its extension. In other words, the warning signs were there. Officials walked past them and did nothing.

Only after the deaths of Kahna’s children did the government finally act. Rana Sikandar Hayat announced that around 750 unregistered academies are now being shut down across Punjab. He said every academy must obtain a building fitness certificate before September or it will not be allowed to reopen. He said children’s safety must come first, and that only academies holding valid certificates will be permitted to run. He urged parents not to send their children to unregistered schools operating out of unsafe buildings, and asked the public to report any school that is not properly registered.

The Lahore Education Authority has now also issued fresh safety guidelines for schools across Punjab, timed to the monsoon season. Every public and private school has been told to inspect its buildings, classrooms, rooftops, and entry and exit gates immediately. Any building found unsafe will have its classes suspended until it earns a fitness certificate. Schools have been ordered to fix drainage problems, check electrical wiring, and repair faulty connections without delay. They have also been told to keep children indoors during heavy rain or strong winds, to stock proper first aid kits, and to display emergency contact numbers where everyone can see them. Any accident must now be reported immediately to the authorities.

These are sensible steps. But they arrived only after 14 children died, after another life was lost in Baghbanpura, and after grieving fathers wept in front of television cameras. The laws these guidelines are based on already existed long before Kahna. Registration rules, building safety checks, and fire safety requirements were already written into policy. What was missing was enforcement. Nobody checked. Nobody closed the dangerous buildings before they collapsed on their own.

Dr Rubeena Zakir, a professor of public health at the Punjab University says Incidents like this keep happening in our country, and there is no proper checks and balance system in place. Whenever a building is under construction, there should be no human activity inside it. But it seems people are not aware of this basic requirement, especially when the building is also an old structure.

She says many buildings in areas like Kahna, or even in old Lahore, are decades old, sometimes seventy or eighty years old. Their repair and maintenance is never done properly, and then construction work suddenly starts on top of them. This means human activity should completely stop during construction, so that no lives are lost. But because of structural weaknesses and social negligence in our system, these incidents keep happening.

She said that she believe government institutions responsible for oversight need to continuously identify unsafe building structures, especially old buildings undergoing repair work. Proper protocols exist for repair work, but they are not being followed. Such buildings should be shut down immediately until work is complete, especially buildings where children, who are the future of our nation, are present. When something like this happens to children, it feels like a moment of complete despair. These were innocent children who had gone there simply to get an education. Incidents like this should never happen.

She said construction is expensive work, and people often do not spend enough money on it, so construction quality suffers. Poor quality eventually leads to failure. Structural design is an engineering discipline, and if poor-quality material is used, it eventually causes incidents like this.