It is the right of every child to attend school. The moment of entering the first class in life, that big step, should be happiness and pride, it should be a beautiful memory, both for the child and for the parents. However, this is not the case in the returnee town of Luka in the municipality of Srebrenica. Autumn brought only new problems to the Delic family.
Miralem, one of the three children of the Delic family, started the first grade. Instead of elation, happy family photos, and hope for a better tomorrow, the family is experiencing difficult days. The school in Potocari is more than 50 kilometers away, of which most of it is a dirt road, but you have to go.
“I get up around four, drink coffee, leave around five, so I can make it to half past eight, then I have to go and pick up my kid from school and bring him home. I won’t be able to do this for long, I have to find a solution because it can’t be done, the road is bad, it’s far,” says Seco Delic, father of first-grader Miralem.
Money has been invested, but the school is failing.
The father neglects his duties in the village, taking care of the cattle, which the family survives on, and he also neglects the preparations for the hard winter that is already knocking on the door in this place. Little first-grader Miralem is distracted in class due to fatigue. But he is not the only one. Several families in the village of Luka face the same problem. But things could have been different.
There is no store in the local community, and there is no doctor either, the locals mostly rely on Srebrenica, which is 50 kilometers away, but that is why there is a school or rather a place that has been falling into disrepair for years. Children did not sit at those school desks, even though about 300 thousand BAM were invested, but the authorities had no interest in making this school work.
At least that’s what the locals claim. Because there is no other explanation for the fact that the school was renovated, but no one goes to it. Some people say “Who would come here to work, there is no car that could handle the daily journey from Srebrenica to Luka”. The former president of this local community, Hamo Zulanovic, claims that the local authorities had no interest in solving this problem.
“The policy from the Municipality of Srebrenica is such that it seems to me that it is more profitable for them to pay for accommodation for a family that has one or two children to go to school, to pay for accommodation in Srebrenica than to pay for an educational worker who would work in the school in Luka and teach the children. About 10 years ago, because of that school, we lost a returnee village,” says Hamo Zulanovic, a resident of Luka.
The Delic family was not even lucky enough to get accommodation in Srebrenica. There is no other option, they say, but to rent, in addition to an already difficult life, paying rent and bills, separating the family, N1 reports.
E.Dz.
