Shock of fifth dorm fire at Sigalame Boys School

A fifth dormitory has been gutted down at Sigalame Boys High School in Funyula, Busia County. This comes just four days after the students returned to school to resume learning. 

The fire is said to have started Tuesday at around 7.30pm when the students were in class for evening preps. 

The cause of the fire is still unknown. 

The school was closed down indefinitely on September 21 following rampant fire cases.

By then, four dormitories had been burnt by unknown arsonists this year.

The inferno has shocked many considering that school principal Peter Auma had been transferred after it was suspected that some learners opposed to his leadership style were behind the fires.

Before this, a dormitory caught fire in the middle of the night on July 27, just a day after schools resumed learning for term one.

It was followed by another fire on August 10 and a third one on August 25. The fourth fire was on September 20.

While closing the school in September, Busia County Director of Education Mr Thadeus Awori said the boys would be recalled after the mystery surrounding the infernos was resolved.

But the new fire on Tuesday raises queries about safety of learners and the root cause of the infernos at the school with a population of 1,600 students.

The learners are housed at 19 dormitory blocks, but this has been reduced to 14 by the recent arson incidents. 

Police officers were deployed to provide security at Sigalame school since the outbreak of the first fire incident. 

The school has more than four night guards and it remains unclear how the arsonists manage to set the dorms ablaze unnoticed. 

"It is a mystery that another dormitory has been gutted down even after we moved the principal who was suspected to be the problem in the school. But we shall leave no stone unturned until we unearth the cause and the people behind the burning of the school," Mr Awori said.