Apart from poor conditions and low quality nutrition, cases of children being tortured by teaching staff have been recorded in Ashgabat’s kindergartens.
Aishagul A, born in 2017, a girl from kindergarten №55 located in the 30th residential district of the capital, sustained a rough-edged wound on her face from a screwdriver with which the teacher hit her.
Moreover, the girl was forced to stand between two beds with her feet squeezed.There was a festered wound on her face and bruises on her legs.
The girl’s mother contacted the law enforcement authorities but no measures were undertaken by the police.
A correspondent of “Chronicles of Turkmenistan” interviewed other parents whose children attend the same kindergarten. They confirmed that cases of children’s battering are not isolated. Kids are often locked in dark closets as a form of punishment.
Parents also talked about bribery in the kindergarten.Children are actually split into two groups: those whose parents enrolled a child in the kindergarten by paying a bribe amounting to thousands of manats to a principal, and those who were referred by the municipal education department.
Those who have paid are provided with better nutrition and have classes and fun activities.The diet of the latter group is much worse and corporal punishment is applied to the children in an attempt to coerce bribes from parents to urge them to transfer a child into a “privileged group”.
One of the mothers employed in the public utilities department said that she brings her child to the kindergarten by 7.30 a.m.because she needs to go to work.
There are a few other kids who are brought by parents earlier.However, a teacher on duty does not allow access to the building until 9.30 a.m.
despite cold and damp weather.
Overall, many parents complain about the exacerbating situation in kindergartens.
— When the kindergarten fees increased tenfold (from 8 to 80 manats a month) we thought that children will be provided with better quality meals.
Alas, one may get the impression that they are not fed at all.The first thing children do in the evening is they ask their parents to feed them, — one of the mothers said.
Another woman said that due to scarce and poor nutrition her two children have constant stomach ache and suffer from diarrhea.
A pediatrician from an Ashgabat hospital confirmed that gastrointestinal diseases are common among children attending kindergarten. There are also cases of bruising and trauma which children sustain as a result of abuse by teachers and nurses.