A roof collapse at a school in Pakistan has claimed the lives of 14 children, with dozens more injured in what campaigners are calling a preventable tragedy. The incident, which occurred during morning assembly in a village near Lahore, has reignited a global conversation about construction standards in developing nations. The UK government has pledged £10 million to a new building safety fund, aimed at auditing and reinforcing schools across the region.
For the families in the village, this is not a statistic. It is a hole in the fabric of daily life. The kind of devastation that cannot be measured in aid packages or parliamentary statements. The children were between the ages of five and twelve. They were reciting prayers when the roof gave way, concrete and steel beams collapsing under the weight of years of neglect and substandard materials.
The UK's pledge comes after weeks of pressure from aid groups and union leaders who have long flagged the dangers of unregulated construction in disaster-prone areas. The money will go towards structural assessments, retrofitting of existing buildings, and training for local engineers. But critics say it is a drop in the ocean. The International Labour Organization estimates that 70% of buildings in low-income countries fail to meet basic safety standards.
This is a story about the real economy of life and death. The cost of a bag of cement versus the cost of a child's coffin. In many parts of the world, building regulations are a luxury. They are written in languages few can read, enforced by officials who are underpaid, and ignored by contractors who cut corners to make a profit. The result is a system that prioritises speed over safety, profit over people.
The school was one of thousands constructed under a government scheme to improve access to education. It was built two years ago with donated funds from a foreign charity. No one inspected the works. No one checked the steel. No one asked whether the roof could hold the weight of a generation.
Labour unions in the UK have called for a broader inquiry into the international construction industry. They argue that the same profit-driven logic that led to the Grenfell Tower fire is now exporting disaster overseas. The pledge of £10 million is welcome, they say, but it must be accompanied by binding agreements that ensure safety standards are met before, not after, the next tragedy.
The survivors will be treated in makeshift hospitals. The dead will be buried in a mass grave. The inquiry will take months. The money will arrive in phases. And somewhere, another roof is already weakening.
