By Syed Owais Ali
Students at Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMU-Q) are organizing a charity campaign in the aftermath of yesterday’s lab incident that claimed life of one TAMU-Q staff member.
Hassan Kamal Hussien was a petroleum engineering lab technician. He passed away after a lab incident explosion yesterday afternoon.
He is survived by his wife and four daughters between the ages of six and 13.
Earlier today Dean and CEO of TAMU-Q, Mark Weichold, held a community meeting closed off to the public to discuss the incident.
Munazza Sayed, an electrical engineering sophomore at TAMU-Q who attended the meeting, said that the Dean assured the community that “‘the building was safe yesterday and remains safe today.’” According to Sayed, Weichold also announced that a special team has been assigned to look after the financial needs of Hussien’s family.
In addition to the university’s initiative, TAMU-Q students have also launched a charity drive, which aims to collect funds for Hussien’s family, according to Dina Mahmoud, President of Student Body Government at TAMU-Q.
“We are starting to collect money to establish a continuous charity project for Mr. Hassan,” Mahmoud explained. The charity drive will start on Sunday and is expected to last for up to two weeks or even more, if found necessary.
Two boxes provided by Qatar Charity will be placed in TAMU-Q and the HBKU Student Center for students, faculty and staff across Education City to participate in the donation process.
Mahmoud El Touny, the President of the Student Engineers’ Council, said that after the charity campaign is over, his organization “will be more concerned with finding out what happened exactly, and why it happened to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“I expect the authorities from the Qatari government as well as the university to take actions against whoever is responsible,” said El Touny. “This could have happened to one of the students or to another faculty or any other staff member and we don’t want that to happen.”
It was announced in the community meeting that the authorities will be wrapping up their investigation by the end of today, according to El Touny. It was also communicated to students that the university is taking measures to extend Hussien’s family’s stay in the Qatar and help his wife find a job in Qatar.
