Ten million pupils head toward schools throughout Afghanistan in the New Year half of which should do with studying under trees, tents or in open spaces exposed to sun light, rain and wind. Students with dusty faces but full of hope are studying in tents. Some of the schools in Kabul don’t have desks and students have to sit down on bare ground and cope with such a situation. Arezo an eleven-year old girl studying with her classmates in a tent says, “When the weather is dusty and windy our books and notebooks are scattered and we have to run after them. When it is rainy our books and clothes become dirty. The books are not sufficient and the teachers insist and urge us to buy books.”

        She also says that she has to sit with 3 more classmates on a 2-person desk. She complains about the lack of books which is hindering her studies. Providing uniform is another problem students like Arezo are faced with. There are families in Kabul city and other areas that cannot afford providing uniform for their children. She further claims: “They make the new students to buy new clothes and uniforms but we don’t have money, we have financial problems.”

• “Problems to worse in the future”

        During Taliban regime female schools were shut down in almost every part of Afghanistan. But the new governmental system came on along with millions of dollars of aids to support and rebuild Afghanistan education system. According to ministry of education half of the schools throughout Afghanistan do not have building, but the attempts to make them are tangible; thus, it is said to make nine thousand more schools as it is needed. Nonetheless the ministry of education has warned that the problems caused by lack of schools’ building are going to worse off in the future.

       Farooq Wardak, Afghanistan education minister, in the first day of school opening said that half of the students are inevitably going to study under the trees or in tents. Students who are sitting here will suffer in rainy days. Also the teachers are complaining about the conditions that they will undergo in the coming months.

        Soraiya the teacher who teaches in such a condition says: “In the tents there is much dust, in rainy days there is too much mud. We have to make do with such an unpleasant situation.” Taliban has burned hundreds of schools in unsecured areas of Afghanistan in the last decade. For the time being the government is not able to repair and open the schools in areas under Taliban potential control.

(Retrieved  from Mandegardaily newspaper)