Library building donated to SamGASI sold for almost a billion soums in Samarkand

In 1991, the library had a fund consisting of 50,000 volumes of scientific, technical, historical, fiction and other literature. To date, 17 thousand books have been handed over to waste paper, and the rest have been sent to the Samarkand State Institute of Architecture and Construction (SamGASI).

“The topics of the books sent to waste paper are not only socio-political, they are books on technical specialties, mathematics, physics, geography, biology in Russian and Uzbek. Hundreds of valuable books are simply thrown away, their only “fault” is that they were published before 1976!

“All over the world, the older a book gets, the more valuable it is and the more carefully it is kept. And we simply destroy such wealth,” teacher Isroil Tillaboyev, who covers many problems in the field of education, writes.

The teacher suggested introducing a moratorium on the transfer of libraries to entrepreneurs.

Kun.uz contacted the Bulungur district administration regarding this information. According to the administration, this library was transferred free of charge to the balance of the SamGASI on the basis of a presidential decree dated June 20, 2006, decisions of the governors of Samarkand region and Bulungur district.

The library building was put up for sale on the e-auction.uz site and sold on February 16, 2023 for 996,126,400 soums.

The Bulungur district administration reported that they had offered the Samarkand State Institute of Architecture and Construction to leave the library in the district. However, the administration of the institute announced the reorganization of this branch on the territory of the institute and the employment of the library staff. The administration offered to allocate the building for rent on the territory of the district, but the institute said that it was not possible to pay the rent.

It was not possible to get a comment from the Samarkand State Institute of Architecture and Construction regarding the fate of the library.

One more example. In Uzbekistan, not only library buildings donated to universities are sold, but libraries built by entrepreneurs at their own expense are often not efficiently used. For example, in the Markhamat district (Andijan region), a modern library built by an entrepreneur and donated to the population does not work because of a debt for electricity.