Melikov angered by critical report on federal TV channel about Dagestani school

Sergey Melikov, the leader of Dagestan, has claimed that the report of a Dagestani journalist about a dilapidated school building in the village of Shinaz, released on the federal TV channel, is biased. The leader of the republic has emphasized that he has been monitoring the situation with the school for two years already.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that out of 1407 schools in Dagestan, 143 are recognized as unsafe, and other 714 schools require major repairs.

Dagestani leader Sergey Melikov has called biased the story of Murad Magomedov, a correspondent of the newspaper “Izvestia”, about the situation with the school building in the village of Shinaz in the Rutulsky District, the Dagestani weekly newspaper “Chernovik” (Rough Draft) reports.

Sergey Melikov reproached the journalist for trying to “earn popularity on obvious problems” and said that a school would be built in the village. The leader of Dagestan blamed contractors for the problem.

A TV report about the school was posted on Murad Magomedov’s Telegram channel. “The children in the village of Shinaz have to study, literally risking their health. All because their school was demolished, but no new one was ever built in its place. Therefore, more than 100 schoolchildren have to study in cold classrooms and sit in their jackets during classes,” says the annotation to the video.

The story notes that the villagers were promised a new school building five years ago.

Furthermore, the TV report quotes Rasim Mirzabekov, the principal of a dilapidated school in the Shinaz village, who spoke about the claims of parents from among the military personnel. “They say we are defending our homeland, but in what conditions do our children study? These parents have big complaints against the school management,” said the school principal.

The school building is “so old and dilapidated that it is crumbling,” the author of the report emphasizes.

Let us remind you that residents of other villages in Dagestan also complained to the authorities about the condition of school buildings. So, in December 2023, residents of the village of Turshunai in the Babayurt District complained to President Putin that the local school building was considered unsafe and that children had to study in back rooms, but the local authorities did not respond to requests to build a new school.