TEHRAN (Iran News) – Some 81,500 classrooms have been constructed over the past 8 years across the country, Mehrollah Rakhshanimehr, director of the Organization for Development, Renovation, and Equipping Schools, has said.
The number of old classrooms in need of reconstruction and renovation has been reduced from 30 percent to 19.5 percent over the past four years, he said.
So far, about 280,000 classrooms have been retrofitted to meet the safety standards, he added, ILNA reported on Sunday.
Over the past 8 years, school building benefactors donated 85 trillion rials (nearly $2 billion at the official rate of 42,000 rials) to constructs classrooms nationwide, he also noted.
The national budget bill for the next [Iranian calendar] year (March 2021-March 2022) has foreseen a significant rise for the renovation and retrofit of schools compared to previous years, as a total of 86 trillion rials (nearly $2 billion at the official rate of 42,000 rials) was proposed for school renovation in the budget bill.
Rakhshanimehr said in August 2020 that some 30 percent of the country’s schools have been constructed by school-building benefactors; there are 450 school-building charities in Iran.
Iran has many school-building benefactors amounting to 650,000 people inside and 1,000 people outside the country.
A total of 36 trillion rials (nearly $857 million at the official rate of 42,000 rials) has been allocated to renovate the schools nationwide over the past 8 years, Seyed Mohammad-Ali Afshani, former head of the Organization for Development, Renovation, and Equipping Schools, said on Saturday.
There are some 107,000 schools nationwide with 530,000 classes, 160,000 of which are dilapidated, not meeting safety standards, accounting for 30 percent of the schools nationwide.
