As a reminder, a 2nd-year student, in the energy engineering programme, died and another was seriously injured, following the collapse of a wooden railing, on which they were leaning, while a student was saved in extremis by her friend.
The tragedy occurred at 8:55 a.m., while the ambulance, according to a student, arrived at 9:15 a.m. This accident called into question the safety and maintenance standards within the faculty in question. Does the establishment have a budget to look after the safety of students? "No," replies the Secretary General of the Faculty, "but we meet our needs in this area by drawing from the maintenance and upkeep section." The railings, according to the same source, date from 1992.
The Secretary General asserts that the degradation of the balustrade is due mainly to corrosion: "Nothing was visible and we could not foresee this tragedy.
The other railings are still in good condition. What happened saddens us all." After the death of the young student, the Faculty has, finally, started a project for the reinforcement of all the steel railings. For his part, Lahcen Daoudi, Minister of Higher Education, visited the scene of the tragedy and requested a technical expertise to determine the causes of the collapse. Furthermore, a commission from the ministry has started an inspection within the said establishment since last Wednesday.
"The faculty is equipped with surveillance cameras and serious security measures are taken at the level of all spaces, notably the labs," adds an official of the establishment. Nevertheless, the tragedy revolted the majority of the students. "Any one of us could have been in the place of the deceased," laments one of them. Another problem that fuelled the students' anger is the "poor" care of the injured at hospitals. "The Moulay Abdellah Hospital of Mohammedia does not have the necessary equipment for proper care of serious cases, which are, for the most part, transported, after a great loss of time, to Casablanca," indicates a student at the Mohammedia faculty. For now, no party has been declared responsible for this accident.
Inaugurated in 1994, the Faculty of Sciences and Techniques (FSTM) makes its reputation by relying on the quality of both its teaching staff and its selected students. It also relies on the efficiency of its semester and modular pedagogical system, based on continuous assessment and the supervision of its students by distributing them into classes with reduced numbers. In terms of applied research, it has set itself as a main objective targeted research axes oriented towards the needs of the socio-economic environment, axes that allow for the accompaniment of the region's development. This development results from the strong industrialisation of the greater Casablanca region. It concerns diverse and varied sectors: oil refining, energy production, textiles, chemical and parachemical industries, agri-food, etc.
