TEHRAN – Members of the Majlis (Iranian Parliament) have approved special budgets to support releasing unintentional crime prisoners and building schools nationwide.

In this regard, a total of 3 trillion rials (nearly $12 million) was earmarked to the Blood Money Organization to help release prisoners of involuntary crimes and reduce social harms as per the next year’s budget bill (March 2022-March 2023).

Moreover, it was approved that the Ministry of Education should spend one percent of the revenues of state-run companies and the net profits of banks and private institutions to build schools in deprived areas in line with the goal of promoting educational justice.

Freeing prisoners of involuntary crimes

A total of 6,362 inmates of involuntary crimes have been released since the beginning of the current [Iranian calendar] year (March 21, 2021), according to the head of the Blood Money Organization.

Freeing prisoners of involuntary crimes is done in three ways. The first way is granting prisoners leave and the second way is providing a number of them with loans to be paid inside the prison.

The third way of assistance is the release of unintentional convicts by paying their debt.

Some 252 of these released prisoners were female convicts and the rest were male debtors who were incarcerated due to inability to pay financial debts or inability to pay dues (workshop accidents and traffic accidents), Asadollah Joulaei said.

The prisoners had a sum of 3 trillion rials (nearly $111 million) in debt, and more than half of this amount has been forgiven by the plaintiffs, IRNA reported on Friday.

School-building donors

Benefactors have proposed 28 trillion rials (nearly $102 million) to be included in the budget bill for the next Iranian calendar year for building and renovating schools, Mehrollah Rakhshanimehr, director of the Organization for Development, Renovation, and Equipping Schools, said.

School-building donors allocated more than 30 trillion rials (nearly $111 million) to construct educational places nationwide in the last [Iranian calendar] year (March 2020-March 2021), which has doubled this year.

Since 2017, the government has contributed more than 60 trillion rials (nearly $218 million) to school-building donors, he added.

"Brick-by-brick" national plan started early last year (March 2020 – March 2021), aiming to attract public participation for school construction in deprived areas even by buying a brick.

Iran has many school-building benefactors amounting to 650,000 people inside and 1,000 people outside the country.

FB/MG