About a day after Uganda was shaken by the country’s worst school excursion tragedy in recent years, another bus transporting students has been involved in a serious road accident, this time in Kamuli District, leaving several learners injured and deepening fears over the safety of school travel.
The latest crash occurred late Thursday night along the busy Jinja–Kamuli Road when a school bus carrying students from Nalango Secondary School rammed into a sugarcane truck. The collision happened at about 10 p.m. as the students were returning home from an educational tour in Jinja.
The students were travelling in a bus owned by Buzaya Secondary School, registration number UAZ 463F, which had been hired for the excursion.
Witnesses described scenes of panic as the violent collision left several students trapped inside the damaged bus while others cried out in pain. Residents and first responders rushed to the scene and helped evacuate the injured before they were transported to Kamuli General Hospital and Busota Health Centre III.
Those injured reportedly sustained fractures and other serious injuries, although authorities had not yet released an official update on their condition by the time of publication.
Police were yet to issue a formal statement explaining how the crash happened or confirming the exact number of students injured. The circumstances surrounding the collision remain under investigation.
The Kamuli accident comes at a particularly painful moment for the country, which is still grappling with the aftermath of another horrific school bus disaster that unfolded only hours earlier.
In that tragedy, a school excursion bus transporting pupils of King David Junior School crashed along the Kapchorwa–Mbale Road, killing at least 24 children and leaving dozens of others seriously injured. The accident has triggered national mourning and prompted renewed debate over the safety of school transport, the condition of buses used for educational trips, driver conduct and enforcement of traffic regulations.
With two separate school excursion buses involved in major crashes within hours of each other, pressure is mounting on authorities to tighten safety inspections, strengthen regulation of school transport and ensure that vehicles carrying learners meet the highest safety standards before being allowed onto Uganda’s roads.
The latest incident in Kamuli is expected to add urgency to ongoing discussions on school transport safety as investigators work to establish what caused both crashes.
Meanwhile, the Education Ministry has suspended school tours and trips after the Kapchorwa accident that killed over 20 pupils, as reported Here and There.
