With Afghan teachers’ salaries unpaid for months due to an enormous economic crisis in the country, the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF says it would pay them a monthly stipend for at least two months as ’emergency support’.
Afghanistan has plunged into economic crisis due to sanctions on the Taliban administration which stormed to power last August after ousting the Western-backed government as foreign forces withdrew.
UNICEF said in a statement on Sunday that the stipend in the amount of roughly $100 per month, would be paid to around 194,000 primary and secondary school teachers for January and February in the local currency, and would be funded by the EU.
UNICEF Afghanistan’s representative Mohamed Ayoya noted they’re pleased to extend emergency support to public school teachers in Afghanistan who have spared no effort to keep children learning following months of uncertainty and hardship.
The new Taliban administration in Afghanistan was left struggling to pay many public sector salaries, including for teachers, following the restrictions on the banking sector due to sanctions and a drop-off in development funding.
Grappling with how to engage with the Taliban without formally recognizing their government, the international community has made education for girls a key demand when speaking with the group, which has been vague on their plans for girls’ education pointing it’ll all work out once details on how to do so in accordance with the Islamic law are thrashed out.
The hardline Islamist Taliban movement has allowed all boys and younger girls back to class but has not let girls attend secondary school with most public universities not functioning at all, or only partially.
They have blamed the international community for making it harder to fund the reopening of schools and universities for all by cutting off aid, trying at the same time to assure them and foreign donors that people’s rights will be honored, including allowing girls to go to school and women to study.
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