Government Spokesperson Dr Isaac Mwaura faced questions from journalists as he sought to clarify the numbers of pupils accounted for following the Hillside Endarasha fire incident in Nyeri.
Mwaura in a statement on Saturday, September 7, reported that authorities had accounted for 20 pupils.
“We are very happy to say that quite a number of children have been reported and as of today over 20 of them but these figures are still preliminary because the process is ongoing,” Mwaura said.
Isaac Mwaura Contradicts Statements
The journalists, however, pressed Mwaura to clear the air on the exact number of pupils still missing after he confirmed that 20 had already been found.
“For those accounted for, I have not given any figure,” he replied, before being challenged by the journalists that he gave the information.
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Another member of the Fourth Estate asked Mwaura if he wanted them to recount his initial statement from the press release he read to the public.
“At the beginning, you said 20 among those missing had been found. The Deputy President said that 70 were missing, so we are doing a calculation that if you said 20 have been found we are now looking at 50 who are missing,” a journalist posed.
In his response, the spokesperson stated that the government cannot be a source of misinformation, adding that he had not sent the statement to the press.
“We have not given you statement to confirm the numbers,” Mwaura said.
“When we are doing this exercise, we need to be very careful with numbers. Allow me to come back to you with the most accurate figure as soon as the investigators give us the number.”
The questions came after Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua on Friday, September 6, revealed that 70 pupils from Hillside Endarasha Academy remain unaccounted for while 86 pupils have been found.
He also noted that 37 of the accounted pupils had been reunited with their parents.
Also Read: Gachagua Reveals Number of Pupils Not Accounted for After Nyeri School Fire
Details of Hillside Endarasha fire
Earlier on Friday, Education Principal Secretary Belio Kipsang in a statement revealed details of the Endarasha Hillside School fire while confirming that the incident claimed the lives of 17 learners and left fourteen others injured.
The PS added that the school has a total enrolment of 824 comprising 402 boys and 422 girls.
156 boys and 160 girls are boarders while the rest are day scholars. All the 156 boys’ boarders were accommodated in the ill-fated dormitory.
Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Renson Ingonga said that he has asked the Inspector General of Police (IG) to conduct a thorough and comprehensive investigation to determine the circumstances that led to the deadly fire.
Also, the IG has been directed to assess whether or not the tragedy may have resulted from negligence and/or recklessness of any responsibility holders, and to forward the file to the DPP for a review towards making the decision to charge.
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