Free textbooks secured for first-graders in Tuzla Canton

TUZLA, (Patria) - The new school year begins on Monday in the area of Tuzla Canton. Students from 89 primary and around 40 secondary schools located in the cities and municipalities of the most populous region in Bosnia and Herzegovina will fill the desks.

Among them are 4,233 first-graders, who, in addition to the usual gifts for the first day of school, will also receive free textbooks. This is a practice established by the Government of Tuzla Canton, at the insistence of certain parliamentary representatives to include it in this year's budget.

- This was not foreseen in this year's budget, but many representatives, mostly from the SBB, considered it one of the basic obligations when it comes to the education sector. I submitted an amendment to the budget of Tuzla Canton. With that amendment, I requested that about 190,000 marks be allocated for the purchase of textbooks for first-graders. Many of my colleagues supported it, and so, before the start of the new school year, the Ministry of Education announced that every first-grader in Tuzla Canton will receive free textbooks - explains Fuad Hadžimehmedović, a representative in the Assembly of Tuzla Canton from the Alliance for a Better Future (SBB). 

Hadžimehmedović wanted to transfer this initiative to the federal level as well. In his capacity as a delegate in the House of Peoples of the Parliament of the Federation of BiH, he proposed an amendment to this year's budget under which the Government of the Federation of BiH should also allocate money to ensure free textbooks for all students in the first three grades of primary school.

However, that amendment did not meet with the approval of the Prime Minister of the Federation of BiH, Fadil Novalić.

- I believed that we must help young families and relieve them of buying textbooks, because it is not a small expense. Today, it is necessary to set aside several hundred marks to equip one student, and you will admit, that is not little. Unfortunately, we were not able to persuade the Government to support us at that time, but in the coming years it is worth fighting for such initiatives, primarily because it is about education, which should be the foundation of every state and society - concluded Hadžimehmedović.