During a meeting held on April 16, President Kaïs Saïed expressed his deep emotion after the collapse of a wall at the Lycée de Mazzouna, who caused the death of three students. He paid tribute to the victims and addressed the wishes of recovery to the wounded. This meeting brought together the ministers of education, higher education and cultural affairs.
The president denounced the negligence of the authorities, responsible for the degradation of school infrastructure. He said this tragic incident was not an isolated case and stressed that there were many schools, not only in Mazzouna, but throughout the country, which have an immediate danger for students.
Saïed also mentioned the term hogra, meaning contempt and injustice, which it attributes to certain public management practices. He insisted on the need to eradicate this attitude and to ensure that each citizen, that he lives in Tunisia or abroad, be treated with dignity. He praised citizen initiatives in various regions where the inhabitants took the initiative to rehabilitate their schools out of solidarity.
The president recalled that the State, from independence, had committed to maintaining educational establishments, but deplored the inaction and the lack of follow -up. He cited the example of the M’Hallah Jfajfa school in Fernana, where a project to build a bridge for 250,000 dinars was abandoned, and where the situation was resolved later thanks to the military intervention for a much lower cost.
Saïed insisted on the need for the State to fully resume its responsibilities and not to allow such tragedies to happen again. “We are at war with negligence,” he said, calling for rapid and decisive action.
Finally, the president said that each official who does not fulfill his commitments must leave his post. He concluded his speech by stressing that Tunisians, inside and outside the country, must always be treated with respect and dignity. The country, according to him, must move forward with concrete actions and without tolerating the slightest disdain towards its citizens.
