The government has chosen not to challenge social prejudice that prevents girls from seeking education in some remote areas; no schools have been opened.
A website in Pashto called taand.com has published a report on the difficulties girls face.
Paktika province has only four high schools for girls. In 12 of the 15 districts there are no girls’ schools.
Civil society activists want a high school for girls in Sharana, the provincial capital. All teachers and administrative staff should be female, they say.
Yaqoob Khan Manzoor, deputy head of a civil society coordination association, wants the teachers to be recruited from Kabul, and paid an attractive salary and perks including plots of land. He thinks this would encourage many families to enroll daughters.
Paktika education head Mohammad Nasim Wajed likes the idea. He says he is very happy that for the first time 50 girls have graduated this year from girls’ high schools – Bibi Zahra, Bibi Khadija and Fatematulzahra.
Elyas Wahdat, governor of Paktika, also hopes to see girls’ education grow. “People are ready to send their daughters to school,” he says. To Governor Wahdat girls do not enroll because of a “shortage of female teachers, lack of school buildings and some other cultural obstacles”.
Logar
Women here say little has been accomplished in the past 16 years. Fawzia Ahmadzai, a resident of Mohammadagha district, working in culture and information in the province says the central government is like a “mother with her step daughter (Logar)”. “The province of Logar is near Kabul but its problems in education sector are similar to problems of remote provinces,” says Kalsoom Stanekzai, a civil society member. Both lack of government attention to their education and security are problems in the way of girls’ education. “How would the girls study and why would families send their daughters to school?” she says.
Huma Ahmadi, a member of the provincial council, says girls’ education is just in name. People cannot go out of the house due to insecurity.
However, Salim Saleh, spokesperson for the governor, claims the security situation is better in the province than many others, and there is no problem in education for girls. “Some 50,000 girls are attending school, and 400 girls graduated this year,” he says.
He adds there are girls’ high schools in all districts except Kharwar. “There are a total of 24,” he says. No girls’ school has had to shut down, he says, and the school that was forced to close last year by anti-government armed groups has reopened with the intercession of tribal leaders.
Khost
Girls’ education in this province which is next to Logar and Paktika is in crisis. There was a time when 11,000 girls were enrolled in schools, but since these were not all-girls institutions families have stopped sending daughters. It was when Farooq Wardak was minister of education (under president Hamid Karzai) that residents of Khost say there were many “home schools” for girls in remote districts such as Ali Sher, Tani, Gurbuz, Zazimaidan and Lakano.
The authorities in Khost education department accept the problem and say it is a result of budgetary constraints. Of 139 female graduates in the province last year, 41 were from Sheikh Zayed University.
Kandahar
Parents talk about the harassment on the street as a reason for keeping daughters at home. Jabar Popal from Loyawayala in the provincial capital says he complained to the police, school administration and provincial education department but “they did nothing”.
Nazar Mohammad Samimi, the spokesperson, insists “the reports are baseless … no one bothers the girls”.
