Safety commission audits 2,000 schools, trains inspectors

As part of efforts to inculcate safety culture in public and private schools, the Lagos Safety Commission (LSC) is to carry out audit process in about 2,000 schools before the end of the year. Already, 240 audit inspectors are on training to achieve a seamless exercise in 5,000 registered schools.

The LSC administrator, Mr. Dapo Taiwo who disclosed this during a training exercise for safety audit inspectors in Lagos explained that the exercise is to ensure that schools comply with their legal responsibility in terms of providing care for the children and prevent avoidable accidents.

“The exercise started last year but it was suspended to ensure greater effectiveness. We have over six thousand schools in the state and our target between now and December is that we would have registered close to 2,000 schools. The participants plan for the training is about 240 inspectors and this is the first class aside other training schedule that we plan for the months ahead”.

“The auditors will be going out in the next couple of weeks to carry out audit exercise in schools across the state. For the selection process, we looked at the people with safety experience through line of education and they have come from companies and organisations that are into providing consultancy on health and safety matters. The state government has brought them together in order to make the exercise seamless”.

He therefore, urged school owners and heads to cooperate with the auditors when they visit schools maintaining that the exercise would be beneficial to them.

“On behalf of the Director General of Safety Commission, we don’t really want it to get to the point of prosecuting schools that refuse to allow auditors in, however any school that fails to cooperate would be prosecuted.

Taiwo disclosed that LSC would advocate the need for safety prefect in schools as well as organise training for at least two nominees from each of the schools.

Areas highlighted during the training are physical infrastructure check list, expectations, writing safety reports, debriefing, submitting the report, monitoring and enforcement among others.