Exodus of children increases on the background of state’s indifference. Info-Prim Neo investigation

After the massive exodus of Moldovans abroad, phenomenon which became a real catastrophe, which leaves Moldova without labor force and brains, the second part of the exodus which deprives Moldova of its future, is becoming more visible. Following their parents, children massively go abroad. On September 1, hundreds or even thousand of pupils did not come to school, because their parents decided that they should live and study outside the country. At the same time, not a single central authority can name at least their approximate number. The massive exodus of children is taking place in the framework of a procedure legalized by the authorities of many countries where a high rate of migration is registered. This procedure, named “family reintegration” is rather complicated, requires time and money but this fact does not make Moldovans who settled legally abroad change their mind, and they transfer there their children and spouses, so they can make their dreams come true. At first, many of these Moldovans were decided to “make money” and come back home, to their families. However, due to circumstances that changed their views about life standards, not about values (in majority of cases), they did not want other future than together with their families, but … in another “home”. How many Moldovans, who stayed for little while in foreign countries, did not have any doubts in taking with them their family?! Info-Prim Neo has searched for an answer at different state bodies, which are specialized in evaluating the situation and providing solutions, at least estimating the number of those who flee the country. The Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration (which is present two times in legalizing the documents of family reintegration: first legalizing the set of documents in Romanian and then of those translated into the language of the destination country) failed to offer statistics, because the solicitants do not specify the aim of these actions. In an official answer addressed to the Agency and signed by the deputy minister Valeriu Ostalep, it is said that “the procedure and the requests for the Moldovan citizens who want to reunite their families abroad is the duty of the specialized bodies from the destination country”. The Ministry of Education and Youth is also a part of the “Family reuniting” chain. Nadejda Velisco, the head of the pre-higher education department declares that this subject “does not interest her”, because she is concerned with children who remain at home with their relatives, neighbors etc. According to the cited source, the figure of these children could reach 20 thousand in the whole country. Valentina Miteva, employee of Recognition and Equalizing Service from the same ministry declares that she “is not entitled to offer such information” without the agreement of her superior, Igor Sandler, who was protected for a month by his secretary from the insistency of the Info-Prim Neo reporter. Neither the Migration Bureau, nor the Ministry of Informational Development, nor the Agency for Labor Force Employement could not offer any answers to this inquiry. The most frequent justification was that “we do not deal with this problem”. In the light of this general unconcern of the state regarding the massive exodus of children, IPN tried to investigate this phenomenon on our own, by telephoning the education departments from several randomly selected raions, as well as from the municipality of Chisinau. At the Department for Education, Youth and Sports from Chisinau we found out that at present 20 solicitations of this kind are examined. However, sources from the Department declared that this figure can not present the real situation, because many children take children from schools without announcing authorities. In raions, almost no one is concerned by this phenomenon. It is true that some persons promised that they will “handle” this problem after the discussion with the reporter. Dumitru Cojoc, from the Education Department of Soroca said that “this didn’t occur to us until now, the minister did not obliged us to do so, but now when you told us about this, we will collect such information because they are interesting indeed.” One of the explanations was offered by Domnica Petrovici from the Education Department of Edinet. According to her, the approval of the raion education department is solicited – strangely! – only when transferring children from general school to lyceum, not when transferring them from a country to another. Only from the Education Department of Criuleni IPN managed to find out that 126 children from this raion left the country together with their parents. Vera Stahi, protection of children’s rights specialist, explained us that authorities from the raion are interested of finding out this information because of a case that happened 2 years ago when the husband of a woman who was working abroad tried to rape his own daughter, he should have taken care of. At present 433 with both parents abroad and 1123 – with one parent are registered in the raion. Until now the specialized ministry still failed to publicize the information on school non-attendance at the beginning of the new school year. The ministry promised that this information will be known only close to October 1. At the same time, according to Ludmila Esanu, deputy-head of the Development Programs Coordination and Monitoring of the Ministry of Economy and Commerce, one of the greatest deficiencies in implementing the Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (EGPRSP) is the situation of the educational system. The rate of children attending school has decreased, one of the reasons being the migration of parents together with their children. Info-Prim Neo will continue investigations on the causes and effects of children’s exodus, as well as the attitude of the authorities regarding this phenomenon.