Teaching other-language speakers to speak the official language should be a priority, Marian Lupu

At one of the first meetings of the Parliament’s spring session, on the proposal of the Speaker, the lawmakers will examine and adopt a decision for setting up a special parliamentary commission, whose task will be to draft a national programme for teaching the official language to other-language speaking citizens of Moldova. This is the reply of Speaker Marian Lupu to a solicitation by the Gagauz People’s Assembly for the optimisation of the conditions for learning and using the official language by the residents of the autonomy, Info-Prim Neo reports. In Lupu’s opinion, although heavily discussed by the general public since Moldova became independent, the issue of learning and speaking the official language by Moldova’s ethnic minorities in their daily life is still a present-day problem, which hasn’t been adequately addressed. The Speaker went on to add in his reply that because of the inadequate levels of teaching the official language, the speakers of other languages, especially the youth, are unable to fully profit form the advantages of Moldova’s political, social and economic life. The 2004 census revealed that less than 30 percent of other-language speaking citizens of Moldova know the official language. In the Gagauz autonomy this rate is as low as 12 percent.