Sana'a..Houthi black market for school books
English - Wednesday 18 August 2021 الساعة 08:08 pm
Sana'a, NewsYemen, private:
Citizens in Sana'a and the neighboring governorates complained about the high school fees for private schools, an increase of 100% over the last academic year, amid a noticeable recovery in the black market for textbooks.
Parents told NewsYemen that the school book was not available at the beginning of the academic year (2021-2022 AD) in government schools, and its sales were booming on sidewalks and public streets with modern printed copies under the supervision of textbook printing and the Ministry of Education, which is run by the Houthi militia led by Yahya al-Houthi, brother of the group’s leader.
In private and private schools, parents in Sana’a revealed that school administrations obliged them to pay exorbitant sums of money for school curriculum books printed in government textbook presses, which means - according to them – the Houthi militia’s transformation of the textbook presses into a private investment institution to develop the balances of the group’s leaders.
Ali al-Nahmi, the guardian of 3 students in Sana'a, said that textbook printing presses sell books to private schools at high prices, adding their value to tuition fees, and exacerbating the suffering of parents, according to undeclared commercial agreements between the leadership of the Ministry of Education and the owners of private and private schools.
In a field tour by (Newsmen), the price of a textbook for basic education classes, in what has become known on the black market, ranged between 500 and 800 riyals per book, while its price for the secondary level exceeded 1,000 riyals per book.
A guardian of 3 students will need 20,000 riyals - an average figure - for most Yemeni families in Sana'a and its neighboring governorates, to purchase a textbook for only 3 students in the basic education stage.
On Sunday, August 15, the leader of the Houthi militia, appointed as Deputy Minister of Education in Sana'a, Qasim Al-Hamran, chaired a meeting described by the group's media as "exceptional" in order to "confront the rise in private education fees."
At the meeting, Al-Hamran considered, “The crazy increase in fees in private schools is not spontaneous, but rather confirms the existence of suspicious projects.” Any private or private school that commits violations, whether by closing, fining, or any other harsher measures.”
They considered that the parents of the lack of textbooks and the boom in sales on the black market, as well as the high prices of school fees in private schools, all come in the context of the scheme to ignore the generations and thus attract them to the fronts, and in the framework of the systematic destruction of the educational process and turning it into a source of financing the activities of the Houthi militia and its wars.
