Dr. Yusuf Goran announced that there will be a huge obstacle on the way of education process because comparing to the previous years, the payment to students have been reduced a lot, but the scientific activities have increased. This announcement of Dr. Yusuf Goran, The Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research was during his taking part at the conference about genocide at Halabja University.
In the conference, Mahmoud Salih, the Minister of Martyrs and Anfals, numbers of Kurdistan Lawmakers, lecturers, researchers, experts, specialized people, and representative of NGOs were present. The conference was held on Sunday 28th/Aug under the name of The Genocide of Kurdistan-Iraq and as an Initiation toward Independence of Kurdistan. The conference was held at the Halabja Monument and some speeches were released.
In this context, Dr. Yusuf Goran, the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research talked about the conference as significant and said, “First, I thank the Halabja University Presidency and the organizers of the conference and hope that Universities and Thinking Centers keep holding these types of activities.” He also said, “However, Anfal and Genocide are huge wounds, but still the universities and the academic institutions have not been able to have enough research about the aspects of the events and the oppression have faced our nation, but the majority of their researches are circulating around the political aspect.” The Minister also said, “The significance of the conference is that it has touched to the topics whom are not been touched before and this has reflected in the Agenda of the conference.” Dr. Yusuf Goran also explained that in the previous conferences there were only talking about the physical aspect of genocide and its impact upon the bodies, but the Kurdish cultural genocide in which circulating around Aribization, hurting Kurdish ID- which they are parts of cultural genocide- have been zero paid attention.”
In another part of his speech, The Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research talked about the conditions of universities and hailed the role of lecturers and employees in which have kept studying going and said, “The Universities and lecturers’s roles in general and employees in special is under a bad financial crises but their feelings of responsibilities didn’t allow them to boycott the process of education of last year. In doing this, if they didn’t show their role of responsibilities, the process of education and study would not be continued. Anything related to our responsibilities to provide their rights, we have done our best to fight for their rights. In this regard, we were the only university to give a project to make the lives of lecturers and employees better.”
Regarding the universities’ conditions, Dr. Yusuf Goran, explained the financial crises of the universities backed by a data and said, “Now, the universities are facing a huge financial problem. If we talk about some years’ data of financial incentives, it will be clearer. In 2012 there wasn’t a financial crisis or had not appeared but there was corruption in financial management. The financial shares of the universities were 130 billion IQD per year. In 2013, the share was raised to 149 billion IQD, but in 2014 the share started to decrease to 109 billion IQD. In 2015, it was decreased to 89 billion IQD. In 2016 also, the first six months, there was only 14 billion IQD shares of the universities. In comparison to the last years, off course has been decreased a lot. However, the tasks of managing universities and their duties have been increased and the universities are in tough financial crises. In doing this, it is time to hail the management staff and lecturers of universities in which didn’t allow the process of education be boycotted but still the number of researches have been increased by 300% and the ration of their publications in the international magazines have been increased by 200% which deserves being pleasure to improve the things which is research and scientific activities relevant. In the speech, Dr. Yusuf Goran, The Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research said, “This year, we are in front of coming a tough challengeable financial crises and based on that our universities have started their financial independency to provide their source of finance and according to a project 70% of the income which they will get will be spent to themselves and this came after a decision of the Ministries’ Council in which was the universities’ presidents suggestion in origin.”
In the end of this speech, he hoped that the conference and its topics cause to let the others of other places have a clue about.
In another part of the conference, there was the speech of the committee of the organization of the conference. Prof. Dr. Khasraw Abdullah, the president of Halabja University released a speech and pointed to the significant part of the conference and thanked the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research to continuing support of his university.
The conference will talk about the aspects of genocide and the way of seceding Iraq