Strategy for teaching state language to Moldova’s minorities could be worked out by this yearend

A strategy for teaching the state language to the minorities in Moldova could be drafted by this yearend. International experts will take part in the assessment of the necessity of the straggly and in its completion. Such an agreement was reached at a meeting of the Head of Parliament Marian Lupu and the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Knut Vollebaek, Info-Prim Neo reports. Marian Lupu informed the OSCE official that the Parliament of Moldova in autumn will set up a special commission that will monitor the executives’ steps aimed at analyzing how the other-language speakers study the state language and how the strategy is worked out. According to the Speaker, the document should envision new mechanisms and an adequate methodology of teaching the state language. The OSCE official welcomed Moldovan authorities’ efforts to insure interethnic harmony in the society and expressed the OSCE’s openness and readiness to contribute to the implementation of policies that guarantee the rights of the national minorities through different projects, a communiqué from the presidential press service says. The Institute for Development and Social Initiatives (IDIS) “Viitorul”, with the financial support of the OSCE Commissioner for National Minorities, has implemented an extensive project to teach the state language to the national minorities during 2005-2008. The beneficiaries of the courses included mainly civil servants as well as doctors, teachers, accountants, entrepreneurs. At a news conference this May, the organizers summed up the results of the linguistic training program for national minorities in Moldova. They said that most of the representatives of the ethnic groups living in Moldova could not study the state language because they had no communication environment. Igor Munteanu, the director of IDIS “Viitorul”, said then that the state should also get involved and have a responsible attitude towards the national minorities. There are about 20 ethnic minorities in Moldova including Ukrainians, Russians, Bulgarians, Gagauzians, Jews, Byelorussians, Poles, Germans, Roma, Greeks, Lithuanians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Tatars, Chuvashians, Italians, Koreans, Uzbeks etc.