Uniforms worth 1.5 billion soums being bought for school teachers in Tashkent 

The Tashkent city administration ordered the purchase of 1,200 sets of uniforms for school teachers. In this regard, Durdona Rakhimova, deputy khokim for youth policy, social development and cultural-educational affairs, signed a confirmation document signed on October 17 of this year.

According to the photo of the document circulated on social networks, these sets consist of shirts, skirts, ties, jackets and blouses, each of which is valued at 1,250,000 soums.

Durdona Rakhimova informed Gazeta.uz that this initiative came from the administration itself, no state experience was studied before its implementation, and there is no such goal.

“All professions have their own uniform, the person who sees it knows at a glance what field they work in. The purpose of establishing the uniform is to increase the reputation of teachers in public places, to form a sense of respect for them in the younger generation. School principals still force teachers to wear uniforms, each teacher buys uniforms at prices up to 2 million soums. Now if you go to any school, you will see different colored suits and blouses on teachers. We wanted all pedagogues to have the same uniform, so we came up with this initiative,” she said.

She said that this practice is not new - in the spring of 2022 uniforms were bought and distributed to 3 thousand teachers.

“Those uniforms were bought by the city administration and distributed free of charge. Educators are still happy and wearing it. We are taking it to other teachers step by step. As a continuation of this process, it is planned to buy uniforms for 1,200 teachers. The price of one teacher’s uniform is said to be 1.25 million soums, but this is the highest price. If teachers buy skirts, blouses, etc. from the market, it will be very expensive. And we are buying uniforms for them from the surplus of the local budget and distributing them free of charge,” Gazeta.uz quotes Durdona Rakhimova as saying. 

In the summer of this year, it became known that the Tashkent city administration allocated a total of 15.7 billion soums from the budget for uniforms of school teachers.

Later, according to the decision No. 767-14-0-Q/22 of the khokim of July 27, money in the amount of 12.7 billion soums was allocated for uniforms for 15 thousand school teachers from the additional funds of the local budget.

On July 27, the Minister of Public Education Bakhtiyor Saidov, in a briefing on the subject of school uniforms, called the news about the introduction of a uniform for teachers “fake”. The ministerial press service informed that there is no nationally defined and approved uniform for school teachers.