Teacher commits suicide because of poverty Payam-e-Zan, No.51 June 1999

After the fundamentalist Taliban took over the country, the life of Mohammad Ashraf son of Mohammad Sharif, who had been teaching for over twenty years at different schools in Kabul, deteriorated, like the lives of the vast majority of people. He and his wife, who was a teacher too, were struggling with poverty like thousands of other teachers, and eventually became refugees. Ashraf always wanted to see his children educated. He was diagnosed with asthma three years ago, and despite the need for proper medication and nutrition could not have access to them because of his poverty. He had not been paid his trifle salary, which was his only income, for the past eight months. One day he saw his 9- and 13-year-old sons wandering on a cart on streets with their mother. He became extremely depressed upon seeing this scene. Finally, on Nov.25,1998 he took his life by taking pills and left his wife and five children, who still don't have any source of income, on their own.

-- Morghlara
 

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