RIYADH: The General Supervisor of the Schools Security and Safety Administration at the Ministry of Education, Dr. Majed Adeeb Al-Harbi, revealed that his administration is facing several challenges; however, at the same time, many successes have been achieved.

The ministry has allocated a budget of SR 800 million ($213 million) to provide a minimum level of security and safety in schools. One of the most important implementations is the awareness campaign about the importance of emergency exits, and considering their closure in some schools a serious mistake.

According to Sabq e-newspaper, during his interview on Al Eqtisadiah channel, Al-Harbi indicated that his administration is required to provide safety and security to more than 38,000 school facilities in the Kingdom that include more than 5 million students and 70,000 teachers and workers, not to mention the problem of school buildings. Some of these facilities are new and prepared, while others are very old rented buildings suffering from technical problems.

Al-Harbi added: “Concerning the safety of schools, the ministry is treating the problem of closing the emergency exits by training students on evacuation plans. The ministry appointed each school with the task of holding four evacuation drills per year and assessing each one in terms of the time required to implement it. We had 35,000 evacuation drills last year, and we have 9,000 planned for this year.”

The initiative of guarding schools was implemented in 100 schools in Riyadh and Al-Qassim this year, and is expected to be implemented in 1,000 schools next year and 9,000 schools by 2020, he said.

“A new security guard project will be revealed in the next few days and will promote high security in the schools,” he added.