Help Scheme Fails Country Teachers

A government scheme to provide young teachers with loans and land plots as an incentive to stay in this low-paid profession has largely been ignored, Rahmatullo Odinaev reports.

Help Scheme Fails Country Teachers

A government scheme to provide young teachers with loans and land plots as an incentive to stay in this low-paid profession has largely been ignored, Rahmatullo Odinaev reports.

Saturday, 3 October, 2009
IWPR

IWPR

Institute for War & Peace Reporting

Low pay and arduous conditions in rural areas deter many people from becoming teachers, so the Tajik school system is always short-staffed.



Under a directive issued in 2006, newly-graduated teachers were to have access to cheap loans and pieces of land on which they could either build homes or keep livestock as a way of maintaining themselves.



Three years have now gone by, and land registry officials say nothing has been handed out to teachers.



The three Faizulloev brothers all work as teachers in the rural Rudaki district, and took a conscious decision to move out of town after completing teacher training in the belief the government would do something to help them. They are disappointed nothing has happened.



Rajabali Sangov of the Tajik education ministry says his colleagues are well aware of the situation. The problem, he says, lies with local government authorities around the country, which are supposed to fund the scheme but often do not have the money to do so.



In Rudaki, a local government official said land had now been earmarked in the area and the paperwork was being gathered, although he could not say how the plots would be distributed.
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