Afghanistan Times
Related Articles
AT News Report
KABUL: School students in Kabul city complain that they don’t have access to enough textbooks, saying that they had to buy books from private book stores to continue their lessons.
“My name is Shamla, I am in the second grade at school. At the first grade I bought all the books and now again I should buy them from bazaar,” said a student.
“I have received only ten books from the school but they are all old and destructed. I have to buy six more books,” said another student.
“School has not given me any book for two years. I have bought books for the first and second grade. I want the ministry of education to give us educational books.”
Meanwhile, some families say that textbooks are used and old, asking the government to pay attention for such issues.
“I am buying books for my children, the books that are distributed in the schools are not usable, it would be better to aware the officials over selling of books in the markets,” said Mohammad Aref, a father of the students.
“Education Ministry’s authorities have come several times here and said this is illegal but then urged that the ministry is lack of enough books this can help us (the educational ministry),” said a book seller in the center of city. “Most of the books belong to the ministry of education, the head masters of the schools bring the books and sell them with a very low price and then we sell them back to the students.”
Mohammad Ibrahim Shinwari, deputy education minister said that the ministry lacks a special mechanism to avoid the illegal books business in the markets so far.
“According to law, this is illegal to sell textbooks in the markets. We ask police to arrest these people who sell textbooks,” he said.
The ministry of education says that more than 12.2 million textbooks were published in 2015.
