TALUQAN (SW) – Poverty and sadness is everywhere in the air when you walk through Taluqan, the capital city of Takhar where young school girls are selling bread in roadside stalls to support their families.
These girls should have been in classrooms, but now they have to struggle from morning to evening to earn a few afghanis in order to support their families amid the harsh weather.
Fareshta, one of the girls who stopped going to school after the establishment of the Islamic Emirate and is busy selling bread in the city every day, told Salam Watandar: “Our schools should be reopened, we should finish our studies sooner and go to university to become professionals in the future”.
Another girl who was sitting next to the Fareshta and had a package of bread in front of her for sale. When I began the conversation with her, tears slowly wet the corner of her eyes. She said she wished to become a doctor in the future, but the circumstances have forced her to abandon her dreams. Her name was Sajda. “My father died, my mother bakes bread and I bring it and sell it. Sometimes, the bread is sold and sometimes not. Today there is no sale, yesterday was better.”
Zahra, another girl who sells bread in the city, said that not having a caretaker in her family, the high price of food and living in a rented mansion, forced her to bake bread at home and take it to the market for sale.
She added that she is a 9th grade student and since one year, due to poverty, she has been forced to sell bread in the city for half of the day in order to earn a livelihood.
She complained about being harassed by the boys. “When it’s dark, the boys come and harass us, they ask for our number, they talk for nothing, we are working next to men, sometimes, some men come and touch our hands and say bad things.”
With the unhappiness evident on her face, she continued saying: “Believe me, we get tired of life and we suffer. I wish we had a bite of bread to eat and we didn’t come here to sell bread and we were far from listening to people’s words, we are so tired.”
Authorities in Takhar said that they have not received any complaints about this until now.
Hayatullah Safari, the spokesperson of Takhar Municipality, said: “Our effort is that a joint meeting of the council of scholars and the directorate of the promotion of the good and forbidding the evil will be held in order to obtain Sharia permission for these women workers. If it is permitted in terms of Islamic Sharia, we will prepare a place for them. ”
Although there is no specific statistics on female workers in the country, however, many women are forced to work in the city or in people’s homes due to poverty for not having a male breadwinner in the family.
ENDS
