Many students at the Special Education High School for the Blind and Deaf in Balkh Province have raised concerns about the educational conditions at the institution. They say that the Taliban have dismissed or reassigned many of their teachers who were familiar with Braille writing and sign language. This high school is the first of its kind in the province, serving visually and hearing-impaired students.
The students complain that most of the specialized teachers—those trained in Braille and the culture of sign language—have either been dismissed or transferred by the Taliban. According to their accounts, the Taliban have introduced 10 staff members from other departments to serve as temporary teachers, despite their lack of expertise in educating students with visual and hearing impairments.
Sources at the school report that before the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, most teachers at the institution were themselves educated individuals with visual or hearing impairments. Other teachers were fully trained in specialized teaching methods for these students. However, currently, only three blind teachers remain at the school. At the same time, most of the teaching and administrative staff neither possess relevant knowledge nor experience in the education of people with sensory disabilities.
At the same time, 11th-grade students at the school complain about the absence of teachers for subjects such as mathematics, trigonometry, and English. They say that instead of addressing these educational needs, the school administration has assigned unqualified and inexperienced individuals to various departments.
Additionally, sources at the school allege misuse of authority by some officials. One such case involves a woman named Ziba, who previously served as a janitor and was dismissed last year. She was replaced by a man named Jamil, a cousin of Nooruddin Salahuddin Amini, the head of the Taliban’s Directorate of Technical and Vocational Education in Balkh province.
The blind and deaf students of the school state that the absence of educated individuals with disabilities in the institution’s teaching staff comes at a time when dozens of such qualified individuals remain unemployed in Balkh.
These individuals further claim that, during the last three months of the previous year, the Taliban withheld the stipends of 198,000 people with disabilities across the country, citing the lack of an approved national budget. The fate of these payments remains uncertain in the new year.
The Balkh Special Education High School was established in 2012. Initially, it operated under the Ministry of Education like other vocational schools. However, after the separation of the Technical and Vocational Education Directorate into an independent budgetary unit, the school came under its supervision.
Meanwhile, sources at the school say the Taliban-run Directorate of Technical and Vocational Education in Balkh oversees the management of around 10 educational institutions, including the Oil and Gas Institute. According to these sources, in addition to arbitrary removals of specialized staff from the school for the blind, officials from the Directorate have also been involved in indiscriminate tree-cutting on the premises of the Oil and Gas Institute in Mazar-e-Sharif. They allege that the wood harvested from these trees was sold in a “customized bidding process” to an individual named Nazar Shah at a rate of 2,000 Afghanis per kharwar, below the standard market price for firewood.
Previously, some staff members of the Institute for the Blind in Kabul also reported that the Taliban had reduced the number of service workers, teachers, and administrative personnel under various pretexts. They confirmed that approximately 30 to 35 blind individuals had been dismissed from the institution.
