by Fuad Rajeh
SANAA, Oct. 31 (Xinhua) -- Mansour always wants to go back to his school to teach his students as he used to do for the past 22 years. He is not happy with his new job, Khat selling.
In early 2017 after the salary crisis started to deepen in Yemen, Mansour was forced to search for a new job to support his 10-member family with eight kids.
"I searched for a job for months. Then, a Khat seller asked me to help him at his Khat store in Hayel Street and I agreed," Mansour, a primary school teacher, said.
Many of his colleagues have started to work as Khat sellers. Some have found other jobs including construction and working with civil organizations.
The new school year has not started yet in the Houthi-run regions where the majority of the Yemeni population lives. It should have started in September.
There are 166,000 teachers who have not received a salary since September 2016, the UN said, while warning that the ongoing war and the salary crisis are threatening the education of around 4.5 million children in Yemen.
There are around 7 million school-age children in the country, 2 million of whom are out school, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said.
Teachers are striking to demand their salaries be paid, but the responses of the rival governments are not positive.
"The government in Sanaa is telling us that they would give us half a salary in cash every month and the other half in the form of supply cards. And the government in Aden is just talking about obstacles preventing it from giving our salaries," Mansour said.
In government-run regions in the south, schools have reopened but are still facing some problems because of fragile security situation and political unrest.
In August, Ayeda Al-Absi, a female teacher from Taiz, wrote: "This is what an inefficient government has led us to. I am offering one of my kidney's for sale in order to save my kids from hunger. Salary is life."
The two governments are blaming each other for the failure to give the salaries of the employees.
"I am not collecting much money from my new job but I am surviving with it. Education is facing a vicious war in Yemen. It is very frustrating when life turns into a mere struggle to survive," Mansour said.
Earlier this month, a controversial Houthi minister suggested closing schools for a year and sending teachers and students to warfronts in order to win the war.
One of the most dangerous problems facing education in Yemen is that the Houthi-Saleh government has changed the content of the curriculum. Educationists have warned the new curriculum does not serve coexistence or peace and would only fuel sectarianism.
In its October bulletin, the UN said there are 12,200 schools closed out of a total of 15,800 across Yemen primarily because of unpaid salaries.
Up to 2,531 schools have been damaged, host internally displaces persons (IDPs) or are occupied by armed groups, affecting 1.5 million children, the UN said, adding that 169 schools remained occupied until August, including 146 by IDPs and 23 by armed groups in Taiz, Hajjah, Ibb, Marib and Al-Jawf.
Higher education has been largely affected by the crisis as well. College professors have been unpaid for more than a year. Many professors and administrators at Sanaa University have been attacked, threatened and fired from their jobs. Some of them complained the Houthi-Saleh government has replaced them with Houthi fans including unqualified guys.
In the latest blow to higher education amid deepening liquidity crisis, the government suspended on Monday study-abroad programs for two years as from the academic year 2017-2018.
Yemeni students abroad have been suffering because of the delay in releasing their study grants regularly.
Since the war escalated following Saudi-led military intervention in March 2015, the grants for students abroad started to be delayed for two to six months.
Last month, Jalal, a civil engineering student in the fifth year at Al-Ahliyya Amman University, Jordan, started to work in a restaurant in downtown Amman. He decided to suspend his study this year in hope he can collect some money and resume it in the next year.
"I don't have money to continue my study. I borrowed a lot of money during the past two years when the government failed to send grants regularly. I can't borrow more and I don't think our problem would be resolved soon," he said.
