Teachers’ salaries are ridiculously low, says Igor Sharov, rector of the State University of Moldova, according to whom an associate doctor earns only 8,400 lei or so a month. And while the Ministry of Education announced higher salaries for teachers from 2024, Sharov believes the raises will likely be insignificant.
“Teachers are waiting for salary raises. I don’t expect big increases starting in 2024. Even the education minister admitted that there won’t be spectacular increases of 30-40%. These will be modest salary adjustments for various public sector employees that we typically see at the beginning of each year. But the truth is, without salary increases for teachers, we will not be able to move forward as a nation. The same is true of researchers. We complain that young people are not eager to embrace a scientific career, but this is because we have a different generation of young people, who are pragmatic, want to live in the present, and the training of a researcher takes many years. An associate doctor earns 8,400 lei a month today. In my personal case, with a .5 lecturer’s contract, it’s 4,200 lei. Salaries are ridiculously low”, Igor Sharov told a program on RliveTV.
Igor Sharov says that while a minister does deserve a salary of 50,000 lei, a ministerial salary raise must take place in parallel with an increase in the salaries of other categories of public sector employees.
“A minister deserves to have a salary of 50,000 lei, but the timing of these raises is not the best one. Every minister has an army of teachers, doctors, police officers behind them and things have to be balanced. There were always these discussions, even during the rule of Voronin, Filat, Filip, but there was a limit. You cannot raise the salaries of the ministers as long as there are no increases across the respective systems”, said the USM rector.
Today, Moldovan teachers earn between 7,600 lei to11,000 lei a month. Meanwhile, the national average in the second quarter of this year was 12,176 lei.
