The system was developed by a 20-year old Afghani IT specialist named Mostafa Vahriz, who started working on it as a graduate project back when he was a student of Kabul University. His work eventually attracted the attention of investors from Vatan ICT technological company, and several months after that the "System of Administering Schools in Afghanistan" was introduced in 25 public and private schools in the provinces of Kabul and Herat.
"The program allows parents to keep track of their children’s attendance from virtually any location in the country as long as they have a computer. You don’t even need Internet access. A student’s parents can, at any given time, send a message to the teacher who then has to send a reply, and vice versa," Vahriz explained.
He also told Sputnik that his system allows schools to efficiently handle a wide variety of functions, like creating timetables, codifying textbooks, and preparing financial reports. It even has an option to automatically handle the government taxation of private schools, effectively thwarting possible attempts at tax evasion.
Furthermore, the biometric recognition function included in the system helps deal with the so called ‘ghost teachers’, when people who don’t actually teach still get listed as teachers and draw a salary from the government (which is often gets pocketed by corrupt school administration that created the ruse).
"The administrative side of schools’ activities in Afghanistan suffers from a variety of bureaucratic barriers, but my system allows to bypass the cumbersome paperwork. It helps establish a direct connection between the schools and the Ministry of Education, with vital aspects of schools’ operations being resolved quickly and efficiently," the inventor explained.
Vahriz said that he intends to monitor the feedback from the system users and rectify any problems or bugs that may possibly arise.
