The refugee children who were denied admittance to the school in the western village of Kalishte will be referred to a school in the town of Zemen or in Sofia, according to caretaker Education Minister Rumyana Kolarova.

Kolarova commented on the situation in the western district of Kovatchevtsi in a Tuesday interview for the morning broadcast of bTV.

The refugee children were prevented from attending classes at the only school in the municipality, located in the village of Kalishte, after parents staged a protest on September 15, the first day of the new school year, threatening to pull their children out of the school unless the children of refugees accommodated at a nearby refugee center were referred to another educational institution.

The parents expressed fears that the children could be infected with diseases such as malaria, chickenpox, etc, and suggested that they would obstruct the education process due to their poor language skills.

The Municipal Council in Kovatchevtsi adopted a declaration Monday insisting that all people accommodated at the nearby refugee center be removed from the site by end-October.

The school in Kalishte services only18 children distributed in three mixed classes.

Kolarova stated Tuesday that there minority children in the village whose language skills were no better than those of refugee children.

Vasil Varbanov, Deputy Chair of the State Agency for Refugees, declared Tuesday in an interview for the Bulgarian National Radio that the refugee children would attend classes at a school in Sofia's Vrazhdebna district.

He specified that refugee minors who had applied for protection had a right to education, while the ones who had been granted protection were entitled to professional education.

Varbanov informed that the problem with the nine children, all of them Afghan nationals, would be solved by the end of the week.

He noted that the issue of closing the accommodation center near Kovatchevtsi had to be decided by the Council of Ministers.