Dubai: Impacted by the death of a student in an accidental fall from a residential tower, a Dubai school has decided to teach building safety rules to pupils.
The Delhi Private School (DPS) has deeply mourned the untimely death of the grade one student. The five-year-old Indian girl had fallen out of a window in her 8th floor apartment in the Noor 1 building in Tecom on Sunday evening.
According to the police, the accident took place when she leaned out to look down after she found herself home alone on waking up from a nap. The parents were reportedly away at work and the housemaid had taken the girls’s younger sister to a nearby park.
DPS Principal Rashmi Nandkeolyar remembered the girl as a very lovely and sweet child. She said the teachers and students at DPS paid tribute to her. “We at the school are heartbroken…We postponed a family fest for her grade in respect of the child and the entire school observed a silent prayer for her yesterday,” she told Gulf News on Thursday.
Nandkeolyar said members of the school staff visited the family and spoke on the phone and tried to comfort them.
“Our hearts go out to them though we know nothing can console them at this moment. We can only learn from such tragedies and try to prevent it from occurring in future.”
She noted that safety norms to be observed in high-rise buildings were something that schools overlooked in their awareness sessions.
“We educate students about interacting with strangers, cyber safety and road safety, etc. We assume that the parents will take care of this part [child safety in buildings]. Now we realise that this needs to be reinforced and we also need to do something about it from the school.”
The principal said the school will include high-rise building safety and car safety measures in its safety awareness programme since there have been many reports of tragedies related to falls from buildings and children left sleeping in locked cars.
“We will counsel and educate the students about the safety norms they need to follow in such cases…The parents may be aware of such safety measures but when we teach kids to be cautious it will reinforce the message.”
Meanwhile, the distraught family held the funeral of the child in Dubai on Wednesday.
