Moldovan students miss classes in Romania due to visas

On Monday, January 8, none of the students from Moldova enrolled in lyceums in Romania’s Botosani County has managed to attend classes, due to compulsory visas for Moldovan citizens. The leadership of the School Inspectorate (SI) in the county believes that the situation is very unusual, but voices confidence that it will be solved soon. “We have recorded a certain number of Moldovan citizens absent from school in the past years, due to holidays held according to the Eastern calendar, but they were not so many. Today, no student is attending classes, and this may be caused by the compulsory visa regime”, says Horia Negrescu, SI inspector general. Principles of lyceums attended by Moldovan students urged the teachers to avoid recording such absences in the class registers, for the reason that these circumstances are out of the children’s control. As many as 115 pupils from Moldova are matriculated in Botosani, of whom 30 are enrolled in “A.T. Laurian” National College, 18 in the Light Industry School Group, 11 in “Mihai Eminescu” National College, and 11 in “Dr. Mihai Ciuca” National College. The problems related to the big number of Moldovan citizens seeking for Romanian visas called for the Foreign Ministry’s direct intervention, which dispatched to Chisinau Paul Dobre, vice director of the Consular Affairs Division. According to the official, the Romanian MFA undertook all the possible measures to boost up the capacity of the consular division in Chisinau. The personnel was augmented, and the consulate was equipped back in November with the necessary equipment for processing visa applications, having an issuance capacity of 300-350 visas per day. The MFA official specified that, besides the other measures undertaken to speed up visa issuance, the Romanian side called for Chisinau authorities in early 2006 to open two general consulates, in the cities of Cahul and Balti, but no answer came so far. Also, a more spacious building for the consulate was requested, given that the actual headquarters is rather small, but no agreement was reached in this respect as well.