Iran’s Students Threatened by Unsafe School Ceilings

Sara Kh., CNN reporter: Unsafe ceilings have posed a threat to Iran’s children and future generations. Statistics show that a large portion of classrooms in public schools are non-resistant and subject to deterioration. Continuing education in such centers threatens the lives of children and adolescents in our country.

The general perception is that such educational spaces and hazards are limited only to rural schools. However, statistics indicate that this problem has even gripped the capital. To the extent that more than 17,000 classrooms in Tehran Province need reinforcement, and officials claim that in the event of a 5-magnitude earthquake, the destruction of these classrooms is inevitable.

Morteza Raisi, Deputy for Civil Affairs at the Ministry of Education, also emphasized in a conversation with ISNA that students in most provinces are studying in dilapidated schools that need demolition and reconstruction.

Esfandiar Chaharbandi, another official, stressed in a conversation with the Young Online website that reinforcing dilapidated schools in Tehran requires 32 years with the current budget.

Under such circumstances, the response of the Ministry of Education is limited to an action called compensation damages.

And they promise people that in case of death resulting from an accident within 24 hours during the contract period, up to seven million tomans will be paid to the parents of students.

Farshid Siyari, Director General of Cooperation and Support at the Ministry of Education, announced in a conversation with ISNA that this amount can be paid through education departments. In this way, it seems from the perspective of government officials that students’ lives can be simply purchased.

Under these circumstances, and as we have entered the second month of the school year, despite warnings from officials, there is no news of budget allocation to make schools safe and prioritize this matter in the country. Whereas these same government officials easily extend the statute of limitations on financial corruption and grand theft files in education, and prevent the disclosure of information about them.

One of these cases of corruption is the eight trillion toman scandal of the Teachers’ Reserve Fund, which was recently exposed. According to Ali Ghataboldini, former Director General of Cooperation and Support at the Ministry of Education, this amount was spent on purchasing 800 luxury vehicles and paying large loans to fund managers.

This official emphasized in a conversation with Farsnews that with the money spent on buying these vehicles, 12,000 teachers could have had vehicles worth approximately 15 million tomans each.

Interestingly, loans obtained from this money were provided as interest-free loans with zero percent commission to the fund managers.

Mohammad Ali Najafi, former Minister of Education, also claims he knows the individuals who received loans and knows the amounts.

This is while government officials in the field of education claim they have no budget for reinforcing classrooms.

This claim goes so far that Dina Ashtiani, the proposed Minister of Education, announced that although she is opposed to pleading, she is seeking to get a budget for education through pleading.

Of course, according to ISNA’s report, this government official emphasizes the priority of education and believes that addressing the needs of this sector should be a primary and national issue.

Therefore, the evidence indicates that one should not rely on the minister either, and to prevent danger from children and adolescents being entrusted to unsafe classrooms, one can only resort to prayer.