The Guantánamo Provincial Directorate of Education confirmed this Wednesday the death of the girl Magalis Vázquez Gómez, a second-grade student at the Amador Martínez Wilson elementary school, in the municipality of El Salvador. In a note published in his Facebook pagethe directors of Education lamented the accident, caused by the collapse of a wall on the minor.
According to the note, Magalis Vázquez, whose age the authorities do not specify but who, according to her level of schooling, must be between 7 or 8 years old, was “impacted by a fence” this Tuesday, during “recess time” . “The causes of the painful and fatal accident continue to be investigated,” the note concludes, after offering condolences to the relatives.
The death of the minor had been known since the morning of this Wednesday by a Facebook post of the user identified as Mryan De Cuba, a native of Guantanamo and resident in Belgium. The man lamented the fact and also wrote that the girl’s father, whom he called Osmani Omaña, is “devastated by the loss of his daughter.”
“Please, for those parents who have their children there, ask for security for that school, please do it on behalf of the girl who just lost her life”
Mryan denounced that the educational center started the school year “without conditions”. “There are a lot of kids there at that school who could have lost their lives just the same,” she added. “Please, for those parents who have their children there, ask for security for that school, please do it on behalf of the girl who just lost her life.”
The economic crisis that the country has been experiencing since the end of subsidies from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s is manifested in the deterioration of many educational establishments. To this is added the budget cut in services during the years of the Government of Raúl Castro.
According to 2021 data from the National Office of Statistics and Information, Cuba had 10,646 educational institutions and two million students. Ena Elsa Velázquez, Minister of Education on the Island, in the Round Table program, in September 2018, declared that the 2019-2020 school year would begin, with 15% of Cuban schools in a constructive state evaluated as fair or poor. .
In May 2019, at least three children were injured in an accident when a fragment of a cornice fell off onto the patio of the José Martí Elementary School, located on 25th Street, between 54 and 56, in the Buena Vista neighborhood, in the municipality of Playa, in Havana. The events occurred around 10 in the morning, when the third grade students were waiting in the courtyard for Physical Education class.
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