Iraq needs more than 20.000 schools by 2022: ministry
Schoolchildren attend their class at school in eastern Mosul, Iraq April 20, 2017. REUTERS/Muhammad Hamed
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Iraq will need more than 20.000 additionals schools to be ready before 2022 to cope with its population growth, the education ministry said Sunday.
Minister Mohamed Iqbal said in a press statement that Iraq has been enduring “an acute shortage in the the number of schools due to accumulating crises”. He said the required number of schools needs “new ideas and exceptional plans”.
The minister said his ministry, seeking to offset the shortages in schools and finances, eyes a strategy where graduates contribute financially to building schools in return for employment at schools and repayment of the funds later. He said the method spares the ministry delays in constructions seen when relying on investors.
Islamic State’s emergence in 2014 and the ensuing war with U.S.-backed government troops has seriously damaged Iraq’s citizen services infrastructure, including schools and the educational process.
In July, Lise Grande, the United Nations’ human rights coordinator in Iraq, estimated the amount needed for reconstructing Mosul by more than one billion dollars. On Saturday, Abdul-Karim Mohamed, head of Nineveh investment service, said authorities need to build one million housing units to shelter families whose homes were destroyed in more than eight months of military operations which ended last month with the recapture of the city.