Palestinian refugee students enrolled at UNRWA schools have been affected by cold weather. The situation is exacerbated by the absence of heating installations at UNRWA premises.
Parents whose children are enrolled at Jibreen School in AlSayeda Zeinab refugee camp said the situation has become alarming as school heaters have gone out of operation due to the acute shortage in fuel supplies. As a result, children’s academic output and concentration quotient have remarkably gone down.
The parents leveled heavy criticism at the school administration over their apathy regarding their appeals for urgent action.
Palestinian refugee families have frequently denounced the inadequate educational services and poor-quality input delivered children in displacement camps set up across the war-ravaged Syrian territories.
Local schools face overcrowding, with over 50 students often crammed in a single classroom. Schoolchildren have also been subjected to bullying and psycho-physical violence by a number of teaching staff.
Upon more than one occasion, UNRWA has raised alarm bells over the striking upsurge in the rate of school dropouts among the Palestinians of Syria, several among whom left schools to help feeding their impoverished families in unemployment-stricken refugee camps.
Several UNRWA facilities were destroyed in the Syrian warfare and others have gone out of operation, including two clinics, a vocational training center, a youth development center, and 28 schools, out of 112 UNRWA schools in Syria. Other education facilities have been turned into prisons or field hospitals, imperiling Palestinians’ academic careers.