Media Review September 4, 2019

Parents' preparation for the new school year, the amount of "school burden", and the percentage of believers among the population are topics of today's media.

The newspaper Azerbaijan writes about the preparation of parents for the new school year. So, the cheapest satchel in stores is offered for 20 manat, and the most expensive - for 130. Mostly these are products from Turkey and China. Shirts for schoolchildren cost between 20-25 manat, and autumn shoes - 20-60 manat. In a word, to prepare one child for school you need to spend about 150-200 manat.

The website Yeni Sabah.az continues the school theme, discussing how heavy the schoolbags of students are. MP Aydin Mirzazadeh offers to print textbooks for students in quarters so that they are not so heavy.

Expert Kamran Asadov states that school bags should not exceed 4 kg , and they actually weigh 6 or 7 kg. As for the weight of textbooks, they do not meet the standards. Instead of 150-200 grams, they weigh 350-400. And if you consider that there are several such textbooks, then the schoolbag becomes really heavy.

The Yeni Musavat newspaper discusses the number of believers in Azerbaijan. According to official information, 8% of the country's population is believers, which is a very rough estimate.

So, the number of participants in the holiday prayer for Gurban Bayram was 145-170 thousand people. Usually the number of people gathered for a holiday prayer is multiplied by 5 and it turns out 8% of the total population.

But independent centers speak of other figures. Although there are up to 2,200 mosques in the country, about 1,500 of them are active. Nevertheless, the author believes the 8 percent figure may be lower. -0-