Around 800 Nangarhar teachers have lost their jobs since the Taliban banned girls’ education above grade six, according to a source in the Taliban education department in Nangarhar province.
The source, who requested anonymity, said the teachers are all women who were working in public and private educational centers around the province.
Humaira, a teacher and a resident of Nangarhar’s capital Jalalabad, said that she was a teacher in a private girls’ school for ten years before the Taliban closed girls’ schools and forced her into unemployment.
Zarghuna, a mother of six children, said she was a teacher in a public school for nine years and supporting her family before she lost her job.
It has impacted her children’s continuing and she said she deals with an economic crisis every single day.
She has called on the Taliban to allow girls’ schools to reopen and to permit women to work in private and government institutions.
After the ban on girls’ and women’s education, the Taliban also imposed extensive restrictions on women’s work rights and personal and social freedoms. As a result many women and girls are forced to stay at home.