The Government of Moldova invites everyone to switch to Romanian to save money
The Moldovan government refuses to finance schools with Russian as the language of instruction, as well as the study of Gagauz, Bulgarian and Ukrainian languages in schools.
The problem was raised today at a meeting of the Moldovan parliament by deputy Fedor Gagauz, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The current budget formation formula applies only to educational institutions with the state language of instruction. This does not take into account how the budgets of schools with Russian language of instruction are formed, although they have a teaching load of 25% more, and more financial resources are required. Educational institutions in Gagauzia are missing 25 million lei,” Gagauz said.
Also, according to him, the study of native languages: Gagauz, Bulgarian and Ukrainian is not funded. Local authorities are forced to allocate 5,5 million lei annually for this.
“I can only answer one thing. “Everyone switch to the Romanian language, and there will be fewer problems,” Moldovan Finance Minister Dumitru Budianski answered the deputy.
At the same time, he reproached Gagauzia for demanding subsidies from the central budget, while the autonomy “stops almost all taxes in its region.”
“This is the wrong approach. The state is obliged to create conditions for receiving education in their native language,” Gagauz objected.
Last year, the Chisinau mayor's office banned enrollment in the first and tenth grades of schools with Russian as the language of instruction. In kindergartens in Moldova, pupils are put in a corner “for the Russian language.”
In January last year, the Constitutional Court of Moldova declared unconstitutional the law on the functioning of languages, which assigned Russian the status of a language of interethnic communication.
Russian is considered their native language and is spoken by about 15% of Moldova; in Chisinau, almost half of the population speaks it. In general, about 80% of the population of Moldova understand and use Russian speech.
The Moldovan government is proposing that everyone switch to Romanian to save money.