The Ministry of Interior issued a report on the number of employees in the public sector, according to which, the greatest number of citizens got employment in the education department.
According to representatives of the Trade Union of Education, MPs and employees, the government continued employing people in this sector, although surplus workers at all levels of this department were established, starting with the preschool level all the way up to the state university, where there are currently, according to the Ministry of Interior, 14.451 employees.
On the other hand, the sector in the past two years has been left by some 400 workers, who retired or were deemed redundant, but all oh whom received severance.
Education Union leader, Zvonko Pavicevic, said for Dan daily that pre-school, primary and secondary education in Montenegro currently employs about 12.900 education workers, while the rest are engaged at the University of Montenegro. He said he will ask the Ministry of Education to give him the number of new employees, employed after the last year’s protest against low salaries, when the government promised to reduce the number of workers.
“We are aware the jobs in schools are being abused, and that there was unnecessary employment. It is difficult to determine the total number of employees, because there are many temporary workers, or those on sick, maternity or other kinds of leave. We don’t know how it came to that, but we will determine where these redundant employees are. Each school must provide information on the number of classes of all teachers, based on the act on systematization”, said Pavicevic.
Member of the Parliamentary Committee for Education, Srđan Peric, told Dan:
“You don’t need great wisdom to see what lies behind – it’s party employment… It is much more important who you know than how much you know… It’s obvious that the key people in Montenegrin educational system don’t understand what this is doing, how it is minimizing the perspective of the best students after graduation to begin their work in schools”, said Peric.
He explains that the dominant number of school directors is from the ruling parties, and they do not care about the quality of teaching, but for the quality of “party work, or rather, the collection of sure votes”.
Member of the Board of the Democratic Front, Branka Bosnjak, said for Dan daily the educational system is hiring new people only if they are party followers willing to foresee others, to see “who is whose”.
“The education system follows the mantra “one employee – four votes”, and this is the last stronghold of the DPS… Everything is possible in our educational system. Politics reigns here. The budget is insufficient, and most of it goes to salaries. No one cares about conditions in the schools, from toilets to cold classrooms. The governing structure only cares which parties employed who”, said Bosnjak.
