The Iraqi health minister declared this week that almost 50 percent of Iraqi schools lack the minimum of necessary needs for secured environment and health.
 
The report came as a result of a study that was conducted by health ministry and World Health Organization. The report said 50 percent of the schools are not clean and 70 percent of these schools are suffering a lack of drink water. The Minister of Education denied this report although his ministry was participating in the writing of this report. The minister said those who wrote the report have political agenda and they are not academics or professionals. He described the numbers that came in the report as imprecise.
 
Everyone in Iraq knows about the bad conditions in most Iraqi schools. They have been here since Saddam's time. For me, school was always a house of ghosts; it was dark even in the day, small classrooms with narrow widows and dirty. Its walls were ruined by humidity with very long dark corridors and its bathroom (the worst place in the school) had no water and it was place for bad actions like beating the weak student by the strong ones. That is the old image of school in my mind and I still have nightmares of my old school. My school wasn’t the only one like this in Iraq especially in poor neighborhoods. The conditions of schools are still the same nowadays and the most difficult time for the students is the period of final examinations that take place in June and July. They spend hours sweating because there is no electricity and even if there is electricity there are no fans in the classrooms.
The Iraqi government in general and the education ministry specifically, are controlled by corrupt people. Since the collapse in 2003 the government launched many campaigns to rehabilitate schools, spend millions just to paint the schools from outside with cheapest kind of paints, the kind which are removed with rain (just to paint them in the next year to keep the corruption wheel rolling).
 
And now the minister talks about the political agenda of those who try to uncover the truth (I don’t know if the WHO has any kind of agenda in Iraq… Maybe they want to participate in next national elections!).