QURGHONT EPPA, March 4, Asia-Plus  -- Khatlon’s Panj district now has more than 80 teaching vacancies, the Panj education department head Pirmahmad Nourov said in an interview with Asia-Plus.  

According to him, local schools are experiencing an acute shortage of teachers of mathematics, physics, chemistry and foreign languages.  He added that 26 young specialists had been placed to work with schools in the district.  “However, only 20 of them have arrived in the district; moreover, their professional training leaves much to be desired,” Nourov said.

In the meantime, 47 teachers have returned to schools in the district since the beginning of the year.    

            On the provision of local schools with computers, he said that 28 of 352 computers provided to local schools in 2003 had already become unserviceable. 

“Because of shortage of classrooms pupils have to study in three shits,” Nourov said, adding that a number of new schools and classrooms are supposed to be built in the district under the education development support program for the Khatlon province.     

However, he noted that commission set up for studying the provincial education sector had counted only schools which were in very poor state or had been destroyed completely, while many schools in Panj had been built in the 1950s already.