Primary trade union organizations and the staffs of institutions with university financial autonomy express their concern about the prospects of paying salaries this year and demand to solve the pay-related problems. The Education and Science Trade Union Federation of Moldova made a relevant request to the Government, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Research and the National Confederation of Trade Unions of Moldova, IPN reports.

According to the Federation, the request document was adopted at the recent meeting of the Federation’ national trade union staff. This says some of the actions of the Government that imposed new economic-financial conditions on the education institutions, which affect their autonomy, cause bewilderment. A decision adopted during the 2018-2019 academic year obliged the professional-technical education institutions to switch over to financial-economic autonomy. It was yet ignored the fact that the higher education establishments have worked under financial autonomy since 2013 and the modification of the financial rules on the way, while each second student pays tuition fees, without changing the size of tuition, substantially diminished institutions’ budgets.

“The aforementioned actions led to the appearance of difficulties in setting salaries when budget funds equal to the cost of the state order are allocated, especially in securing the own sources of institutions. This way, the institutions can ensure the payment of salaries for only 6-8 months in 2019. Even if the education institutions take concrete measures to reduce the salary costs, the discrepancy that appeared cannot be fully eliminated if the Government does not allocate financial resources for covering the costs of the salary reform in the budgetary sector that was launched on December 1, 2018,” says the document.

According to the data presented to the Federation by 12 universities and 15 Centers of Excellence and professional-technical education institutions, the budget deficit related to the payment of salaries is of about 120 million lei. The maintenance costs of the given institutions total almost the same sum. The payment of the future leave allowances is also in question.