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Moldova teachers demand higher salaries, protection

Teachers and educators in Moldova are demanding higher salaries and protection from violence, saying that they are not respected by students or parents and that the country is facing a shortage of over 7,000 teachers.

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"We want to be respected, we want to be heard! Decent salaries!" said one teacher, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The teachers also say that they need measures to protect them from violence in schools. They say they are not supported or respected by society.

"In recent times, parents and students have been given too much power," said Margareta Sârbu, the president of the Municipal Council of Teachers. "They know everything that a teacher should do, how a teacher should do it, how to prepare for lessons, how to conduct lessons. We don't know what we're doing. So why did we go to school for five or three years?"

Today, teachers at the Gheorghe Asachi Theoretical Lyceum in Chișinău wore black in a sign of sadness. The school's director, Natalia Bulat, said that the salaries of the school's employees are very low.

"Our professional burnout in this hurried and consumerist century is major," she said. "We demand decent conditions, high salaries, and pertinence, in order to survive this global crisis."

Vlad Bilețchi, a teacher, said that the situation is grave, both economically and socially.

"In the wake of inflation, rising salaries, and the rising cost of living, it is absolutely necessary not only to increase, but to index, to adjust, to return the teacher's salary to a minimum of decency," he said.

The draft budget law for 2024 calls for certain amendments, and trade unionists are calling for public consultations. They say they want teachers' salaries to be equal to the average salary in the economy.

"We have decided today to do these activities in schools and kindergartens," said Ghenadie Donos, the president of the Federation of Trade Unions in Education and Science. "The next step, if our message is not heard and the message from the government is not in line with our expectations, we could have other actions. We have asked that the average salary in education be equal to that in the economy."

The Ministry of Education and Research (MEC) said that the government plans to increase teachers' salaries by 15% from January 1, 2024. The reference value for teachers is to increase from 2,000 to 2,300 lei.

The ministry said that it has allocated around 10 million lei in recent months for the training and retraining of teachers. The MEC noted that "the salary increases for teachers are higher than those proposed for other categories of employees."

The ministry also announced that the government was able to identify the resources necessary for a one-time payment of 5,000 lei to all teachers and 3,000 lei to non-teaching staff in October 2023. Payments are in progress. The total number of beneficiaries is over 102,000.

Translation by Iurie Tataru

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