The director of the Innovation Cabinet of the Abinader Administration, Bartolomé Pujals has tweeted urging the government to put aside its intentions to cut funding to the education sector. The Ministry of Hacienda has presented a bill to Congress whereby RD$4.25 billion would be cut. At the same time, RD$1.83 billion would be reassigned to the propaganda arm of the Presidency (Diecom).
Pujals says the population fought for years for governments to assign 4% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to education. Former President Danilo Medina complied and did so when winning the Presidency in 2012.
“… Simply if the government (of which I am a member) insists on acting outside this conquest, it would put itself in a difficult situation before the citizenship. The Dominican Constitution is clear. This fight with society is unnecessary and even worse… it would be self-provoked. If anything defines the budgets of a government, it is the policies to which it is committed. And education must always be a national priority. It is, because without a good education people simply cannot advance in their life projects,” said Pujals.
He specified that education and health are top priorities, so he called on the government not to lose focus and not to turn back.
“This discussion should be about how to improve teaching methods, how we spread scientific high schools throughout the country. How we transform technical-professional education so that our young people can access the labor market and better salaries,” he said.
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El Dia
7 September 2022