About 90 percent of primary and secondary schools in Sarajevo do not have evacuation plans in case of natural disasters or bomb threats. This is what the Parents’ Council in Canton Sarajevo (CS) says.
This question arose after bomb threats were received at the addresses of more than 110 elementary and secondary schools in the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) at the end of last year. Students, after the school received the call, left the classrooms.
The only plan schools have is a fire evacuation plan.
“It is important for us that the children are not on the streets, schoolyards, but in a safe place, especially children from the first to the fourth grade,” asserts Elma Dizdarevic, vice president of the CS Parents’ Council.
In 2018, the CS Ministry of Internal Affairs created a protocol that refers to the procedure in case of bomb threats in schools. Based on that protocol, all schools were required to create evacuation plans. The CS Parents’ Council points out that “the recommendations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the CS were not followed, as well as that a number of omissions were observed”.
The council asked the Ministry of Education of the CS to organize evacuation drills for teaching staff and students twice a year so that they know what to do in crisis situations. In addition, they insist that a plan be made for the safe evacuation of children in such a way that the route of that evacuation is known.
What do the CS Ministry of Education and the Federal Police Administration (FUP) say?
The CS Ministry of Education announces that in the coming period, they will start with increased control of schools.
At the same time, FUP inspectors point out that they most often conducted investigations when it comes to bomb threats in schools and add that the most common perpetrators are minors.
“Motives are multiple, but the most common one is personal motivation and personal interest,” says FUP Inspector Sasa Petrovic.
According to him, it is important to have evacuation plans, not only for bomb threats but also for fires and floods. All this, says Petrovic, should be planned within the framework of issuing building permits, Slobodna Evropa reports.
