Tunisia: Concerns renewed over school safety after another wall collapse in Sidi Bouzid

A new incident at El Msabihia Primary School in the Souk Jedid delegation has raised alarm over the safety of school infrastructure in Tunisia’s Sidi Bouzid governorate. On Tuesday, April 22, two pupils were injured when a section of a wall at a water point suddenly gave way while they were drinking.

One girl reportedly lost consciousness from the shock, while the other suffered minor injuries. The wall had formed part of a sanitary unit constructed less than three years ago, prompting questions about the quality and oversight of recent public works.

This is not the first time the school has come under scrutiny. A similar collapse was reported on April 14, when part of an outer wall crumbled during school hours killing two students. The earlier incident sparked protests from concerned parents, who gathered outside the school to demand improved safety standards and urgent repairs but they have clashed with Police in the process. Their appeals were widely covered in local media, but promises of comprehensive structural assessments appeared to have yielded limited results.

Following the latest collapse, the regional education delegate Mourad Zouaghi confirmed that a technical team had been dispatched to assess the damage and identify potential liability. In the meantime, an educational delegation visited the injured students at the local hospital, where their conditions were declared stable. The recurrence of such incidents has reignited public frustration and renewed calls for accountability in school construction and maintenance, particularly in rural areas where oversight has often been found lacking.