School kids more vulnerable to natural disasters

When a earthquake shook Bangladesh on April 25 last year, grade-X student Nuri Yashfi Karim panicked and forgot how she was supposed to respond in such events, reports the Dhaka Tribune. Yashfi, who studies at a Mohammadpur school, has been reading about disaster management – since grade-III. But, neither she nor her classmates followed the instructions. Lack of drills and difficult to understand contents on disaster management have been of little help to the students.

“Students are reading similar topics for years. A grade-V student should have deeper understanding of disaster management than a third grader, but the contents are almost unchanged from grade-III to grade-XII,” said the JU teacher, who conducted a study on disaster management contents in NCTB books. A 2009 CDMP study found at least 2,737 risky school buildings in Dhaka. If another major quake hits, at least 90 of them would be destroyed and 1,173 would suffer moderate damage.