Mayor says furious with manager and contractor – Manager blames municipality
The whole country is shocked by the death of the little student yesterday in a primary school in Serres.
The public prosecutor of Serres ordered an in-depth investigation into the tragic incident, in which two more young students were injured.
According to what is known so far, the boiler room door was thrown open about 40 meters and fatally struck the 11-year-old boychild of a well-known doctor from Serres.
The boy, together with his classmates, was in the specific part of the yard – which is covered – because it was raining yesterday.
While the causes are being sought, the mayor of Serres declares that he is furious with the school director and the contractor, while the school director states that from the beginning he had expressed his opposition to the conversion of the burner and blames the municipality because the contractor entered at school whenever he wanted.
“We are all devastated, all of Serres is mourning”, said the mayor Alexandros Chrysafis to SKAI. Continuing, he blamed the contractor and the school principal:
“I am also furious with all those who are responsible for this loss of the child’s soul. The mind cannot comprehend the pain that parents feel. I am furious with the contractor who did the work during class time without notifying anyone when this is expressly prohibited by the contract between us. I am also furious with the principal, who allowed the contractor to enter the school without the consent of the municipality. There is a contract with the project contractor stating that he cannot do work during school hours without the agreement of the municipality and the principal. The contractor, while aware of his contractual obligations, nevertheless entered the school. And here there is a question: How did the principal let him into the school while classes were in session? There is a specific provision. No one knew, no one was informed by the municipality that they will do these jobs,” he said.
According to the director of the school, Nikolaos Tsiotsios, a geothermal system for heating the building was recently installed in the school unit, through NSPA, in order to replace the oil boiler. As he mentioned, he disagreed with the said project as it was not a proposal of the school community.
“The burner used to be an oil burner”, underlines Mr. Tsiotsios speaking to APE – BEE. “There was a project in the school unit that I disagreed with. I disagreed many times about this project which was done under the municipality’s responsibility. No bill was given to us. It was a geothermal project done through NSRA as far as I know.”
He maintains that he addressed the competent agency several times requesting the documents for the schedule and its execution without any response. He also points out that while the project was supposed to be completed within a year, in the end, it was completed in two and a half and started working in the last ten days, but as he notes “the word work is in quotation marks because the geothermal had not yet been put into operation”.
According to the data so far, the crews that were doing the work had left when the explosion occurred in the boiler room.
The director stated that the engineer in charge of the project had informed that due to a fault in the new heating system the school would have to be heated as before, i.e. with oil.
“While the contractor was supposed to come on Saturday,” said Mr. Tsiotsios, “and he had to come on Saturday, because I explained to them thousands of times that I do not allow them to do work during school hours, but I did not find any support for this either from Primary Education nor from the municipality. They generally came whenever they wanted and left whenever they wanted. They finally came today to make the relevant arrangement and told us that from now on we will not turn on the oil boiler as the school will now work with geothermal energy.”
The director claims that he was informed about the explosion of the boiler room by a fellow teacher who was at the school while he had left the school unit and they were at home.
“The boiler room exploded because apparently they didn’t release the oil boiler and let it run normally. I was told that he had been fired. I can’t attribute the explosion to somewhere else, because the boiler was the one that exploded”, argues the director and concludes “I disagreed with this project from the beginning and I had sent the documents that the work should not be done during school hours. Unfortunately, I had no support from any organization.”
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