Kazakhstan is strengthening school safety measures. Now every educational institution of the country will install special panic buttons that will help special guards rapidly response to incidents. Such buttons have been provided only to 648 schools in Kazakhstan so far, which is about 10 percent of the total number of the country’s educational facilities. Local budgets of the regions allocated 980 million tenge for these purposes to achieve a 100 percent coverage.
“Now educational organizations are installing panic buttons and reaching agreements. The work is well underway. The Prime Minister instructed us to do this until September 1, as he said today. Currently, about 3,000 more schools are concluding contracts and installing these buttons,” noted Yuliya Ovechkina, Deputy Chairperson of the Committee for Children Rights Protection.
In addition, specialized security services will ensure greater safety of school students, the relevant department clarified. They will appear in 680 city schools soon.
“It shouldn’t be a watchperson, it shouldn’t be a person of retirement age. It has to be a specialized service that has the appropriate license. According to the international experience that we have studied, all schools must have panic buttons, all schools have to be connected to CCTV. In addition, the practice of introducing face recognition systems with a database of those persons who are prohibited from being near children has begun to be used in the world,” Ovechkina added.
The safety of children will also be ensured through their transportation on smart buses. More than 500 of them will be provided to schools this year. These are twenty-seat and forty-seat special vehicles, which will be produced in three regions of the country. The state budget will allocate 22 billion tenge for this.
“These buses will have special equipment. For example, there will be a function of not leaving a child alone in the cabin. The back door will open with one touch. Moreover, there will be an automatic safety check of the bus system. These buses will be painted yellow, like all over the world. The school buses will ensure greater safety for children. It should be noted that only domestic manufacturers will participate in this program on ensuring school safety,” said Assel Kodarova, Head of Mechanical Engineering Department of the Industrial Development Committee.
Despite the fact that 100 percent of schools in the country are provided with video surveillance systems, only slightly over half meet the standards. Governors’ offices of the regions allocated 1.4 million tenge to bring them to the required standards by the beginning of the academic year.
Translation by Saniya Sakenova
Editing by Galiya Khassenkhanova
