President Alberto Fernández began this Thursday the second stage of the National University Infrastructure Program, reaffirmed the Government’s vocation to support the development of science and public education and maintained that this investment is made by “political decision”, despite the fact that the opposition has left the national administration “without a budget”.
Leading an event in the Casa Rosada in the afternoon together with the Minister of Education, Jaime Perczyk; and the head of Public Works, Gabriel Katopodis; the head of state affirmed that they are “taking steps to achieve a better tomorrow” while leaving “an ungrateful past behind”.
As officially reported, the second stage of the Infrastructure Program includes 75 works to be carried out in 24 provinces with an investment by the National State of 33,274 million pesos.
In his speech, Fernández mentioned the external debt that the country contracted during the administration of Mauricio Macri and recalled that nothing that is done to meet these payments will be done “at the expense” of sensitive areas of society.
“We live in a country that owes a lot of money and that has dangerously compromised itself with a credit institution. And when the time comes to see how to deal with the obligations that others have taken on, what we have always said is that this is not at the cost of adjusting to peopleof adjustments on public health, on public works, on education and less on science and technology”, he affirmed.
The second stage of the Infrastructure Program includes 75 works to be carried out in 24 provinces with an investment by the National State of 33,274 million pesos
Then, he recalled that the parliamentary opposition rejected, in December 2021, the so-called Law of Laws: “Beyond that we do not have the budget, what we have is the political decision. They left us without a budget but not without a political decision,” he reiterated to justify the investment.
The head of state had started the day by announcing the Careful and Safe Classroom Protocol for the Management and Control of Covid-19 in educational establishmentsan act in which he also referred to the importance of education as the engine of the country for the future.
“The fact that we continue to develop infrastructure in universities is the best investment we can make, because we are investing in the futureand because nothing is going to make us richer than having generations of Argentines who develop knowledgethat they can research and develop science and technology”, he stated in the afternoon activity.
He also stressed that Argentina, “which has had the enormous privilege of developing public education as it did, cannot be left behind, cannot waste the potential it has achieved by strengthening public education over the years and which today allows it to have universities of excellence”.
The projects of the Infrastructure Program benefit 1.5 million people and are carried out with funds from the Ministry of Public Works in coordination with the Secretariat for University Policies with mixed financing from the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) and the National Treasury.
“That we continue developing infrastructure in universities is the best investment we can make, because we are investing in the future and nothing is going to make us richer than having generations of Argentines who develop knowledge” Alberto Fernandez
Regarding this aspect, Perczyk recalled that during the Government of Together for Change there was only one work in the national university system and that, in addition, a system of financing works was proposed where it was the houses of higher education that had to solve the half of the expenses.
Now “there are works in all the universities that presented projects, without discrimination and in all the regions, with three criteria: classrooms, because the idea is that there are more students and with better conditions; laboratories, because there are universities that don’t have them and for students to do research, and the third is libraries, there are universities and colleges that don’t have libraries and it is something central to the functioning of a university,” he asserted.
For his part, Katopodis recalled that the first section of the program was defined “in the midst of the worst health tragedy in Argentina”, in which “the universities put the body in different ways at a very delicate moment”.
“In this second section, the works take place at another time in Argentina, this investment reaffirms the meaning and priority of education in our government and marks the pivotal moment in which we are, defining what type of development our country needs.”
In the act, in addition to the signing of four new agreements, the new annex building of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Buenos Aires was inaugurated, which has 6,575 square meters and will benefit some 8,500 students and teachers.
