VIDEO: Seven students from Rakai school fire buried

Seven of the eleven students that perished in the dormitory fire at St. Bernard’s Mannya Secondary Secondary School, in Rakai district, were Friday buried at their respective ancestral homes.

Six of the seven were buried in Rakai District at a mass burial celebrated by Rev Fr Nestus Mugisha while the chief mourner was the District Woman Member of Parliament, Juliet Kinyamatama.

Speaking at the ceremony, Kinyamatama called upon parents to take stake in their children’s lives while at school by ensuring the schools have specific measures against fire outbreaks should they occur.

“If you take your child to a school, make sure you also go to the dormitory to ascertain there are no burglar proofs, should you find the burglar bars in windows, please take the child back. If this dormitory did not have those burglar bars, students would have escaped the fire,” she said.

As a token from government, Kinyamatama handed each family Shs5m.

Fr Mugisha called upon parents to bring their children up with principles and responsibility to avoid giving the nation children who are self centred and would go ahead to burn their colleagues in fire.

“When people talk about your children who are misbehaving, you get angry and tell them off your children, that is how they slowly become wrong elements and do such crimes like burning dormitories,” he said

Mugisha said families are the first foundations of behaviour and children in most cases take up what they see home. He therefore called upon parents to behave in ways that would be exemplary to their children.

Meanwhile in Bulemba, Buwunga county in Masaka District, Antonio Ssekitende, another of the boys that perished in the school fire was buried.

Ssekitende’s relatives eulogised him as a very obedient child with very ambitious dreams.

“Ssekitende is a boy but he would greet everyone while kneeling with respect. When you go home and find his parents away, you would have no trouble, he would welcome you like his parents,” one of the relatives said.

Ssekitende died aged 15 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV0mcuOvOjU