Kun.uz received several complaints from students of Andijan State Medical Institute. According to them, the university administration informed all students living in rental accommodation outside the dormitory that half of their November rent would not be reimbursed.
They were also told that all previously submitted applications had been deleted from the system and that a new application had to be submitted for December.
“Because there aren’t enough dormitory places for all students, the state reimburses rent based on contract housing – provided all documents are correctly prepared. This means the homeowner gives consent, and the necessary document is issued by the tax system. At the beginning of November, my classmates and I completed this paperwork and submitted our applications, and they were accepted.
“We were supposed to receive the money at the end of the month. But the November payment did not come. On the morning of 2 December, a message came to the group: ‘the payment for November has been cancelled, meaning it will not be issued’. All applications submitted until now – September, October, November – have been cancelled,” said one senior-year student.
Another student said:
“To help my parents with rent, I signed the contract in November. Unfortunately, they suddenly said they won’t pay. The tutor delivered the message. Now we’re told to submit new applications. It was already difficult to travel back and forth, skip classes and manage to submit the documents. And now they want us to submit everything again. We don’t know what to do.”
Another student said the institute’s administration explained that the November payments were not issued because “the budget had not allocated funds”.
“When we asked why, they said the state didn’t provide money for November. But we never heard anything official confirming that the budget hadn’t allocated funds. How are we supposed to know the state didn’t allocate the money – or whether the funds were possibly misappropriated?
“There are many problems at the institute, but most students don’t speak up. If you go to the administration with a complaint, they focus on punishing the complainant – not fixing the issue. They start demanding explanation letters, or deliberately making classes difficult (preventing participation in midterms, giving low marks in practical sessions),” the student said.
Students also said it was suspicious that such cancellations were happening specifically at Andijan State Medical Institute, not at other higher education institutions.
