Teachers and students of 37 villages in Khuzestan Province have to use boats or rafts to cross the river and go to school. This has led 20 percent of students, particularly girl children, to drop out of school.
Inhabitants of 37 villages of Bavi county commute by boats. The governor of Bavi said, “We can’t do anything. We’ll have to wait for the army.”
The villages of Bavi county in Khuzestan Province have to commute by boat because there is no bridge. But riding rafts and boats is not safe. Particularly, with the arrival of autumn and the raining season, going to school and work will be dangerous for these villages’ inhabitants.
After the flashfloods that washed away some 31 Iranian provinces in spring 2019, problems of Khuzestan Province seem endless. The infrastructures of many cities and villages were destroyed in the recent floods.
One of the most conspicuous examples was the case of Ahvaz, the capital of Khuzestan, where the sewage system’s pipelines broke and black water flowed into the streets.
With the removal of the floating bridge of Bavi county, the teachers and students of 37 villages in Bavi country have to use boats to go to school in the new school year.
Some 200 children in the Sherimeri village cannot commute in this way, so there has been a 20 per cent increase in the number of students dropping out of school, this year.
Ten per cent of the inhabitants of these 37 villages are teachers. They have to commute by boat. Presently, many of the classes have not convened and many of the teachers had to emigrate from this area.
Amin Elhaii, director of one of Bavi schools, said, “We have repeatedly met with provincial and county officials bringing up the problem that there are no bridges for the villages in the east of Bavi county. Unfortunately, we have not reached any results.” (The state-run ILNA news agency – September 29, 2019)
On the quality of the bridges built in Bavi county, an environmental expert said, “Some 400 bridges in this area which were less than 50 years old were destroyed in the recent floods. While the Sassanid bridges which are 2000 years old are still standing. This is indicative of mismanagement and weak design in our contemporary engineering regime.”
