Parents who want to provide their children with an education have to send them to a town 40 kilometers away on a dangerously crowded highway.

The village is 60 kilometers from Rafha town on the International Highway linking the Eastern Province and Gulf countries with Syria and Turkey, Al-Eqtisadiah daily reported on Sunday.

Dabri Al-Jibrin, a villager, said the people’s demands to open a secondary school in the village have been in vain.

He said while 30 students from the village daily travel 80 kilometers between their school and home, wealthier parents send their children to stay in Rafha to avoid having to travel on the busy highway.

Safah Al-Jebrin, another resident, said they received only empty promises to open a secondary school in the village. He learned that the village did not fulfill some of the Ministry of Education’s criteria to open a high school there, but it was not told what the shortcomings were.

He requested the ministry to make it easier to open a school in the village, adding that it was illogical to impose impossible conditions to open schools in undeveloped hamlets.

Obaid Al-Shamri, a secondary student, said he and his friends used to dread driving on the crowded highway, as accidents are very common.

Spokesman of the education department in the province Murdi Al-Anazi said the department has been trying to make a special case for Al-Khoshaibi. He said requests for exemption in the past were rejected. He hoped the ministry would agree to open a school this year.