Several children died in the fire of a dormitory of a school in the center of Guyana, announced in the night from Sunday to Monday President Irfaan Ali from the airport of the capital Georgetown where he awaited the arrival of the rescue.
“This is a major disaster. It’s horrible, it’s painful,” said the president, without giving the number of dead or injured in the disaster that occurred in Mahdia, a landlocked mining town in this small country located in the northeast of the country. South America.
“We are setting up large-scale medical relief (…), I have also ordered that special arrangements be made” in the two major hospitals in the capital “so that every child who needs attention receives the best care possible,” he added.
A security source told AFP on condition of anonymity that there were “many dead and injured”.
Private and military planes have been sent to Mahdia, about 200 km south of Georgetown as the region is affected by heavy rains.
“Our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of those affected by this tragedy,” said Natasha Singh-Lewis, Opposition MP.
“We call on the authorities to carry out a thorough investigation into the causes of the fire and to provide a detailed report on what really happened. We must understand how this horrific and deadly event happened and take all necessary measures to prevent such a tragedy from happening again in the future,” she added.
A small poor English-speaking country of 800,000 inhabitants, Guyana, a former Dutch and then British colony, has the world’s largest per capita oil reserves and hopes for rapid development in the years to come with the exploitation of these reserves which is still at his beginnings.
Specialists estimate that the Guyana-Suriname basin contains around 15 billion barrels of oil reserves associated with significant gas deposits.