SANTO DOMINGO.-Francisco Domínguez Brito, presidential candidate of the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), pointed out that it is a crime, a violation of all pacts, a contradiction with the National Development Strategy to reduce education by 4%: “Worse still is deepening inequalities and poverty in the Dominican Republic, which would cause the fact of reducing 4% of GDP to education”.
“What we are seeing is a government that is insensitive to the poorest people, who do not have the capacity to be moved, and to understand that private schools today are giving classes every day and that the public system has abandoned the children of families poorest in the last two years. Who comes up with a minimum of common sense to remove 4,000 or 5,000 million pesos to reduce breakfast, snacks and school lunch? That is bringing more malnutrition to the poorest households and leaving the poorest families without food. This is inadmissible! This is intolerable!” she stated.
The Executive Branch proposes to reduce the spending appropriations of various ministries, including the Ministry of Education, to make transfers to other institutions, within a proposal submitted last week to the National Congress to modify the 2022 budget. Despite being prohibited by the Constitution, the amount to be transferred from the Ministry of Education (MINERD) is RD $4,240 million.
In its Article 63, numeral 10, the Dominican Constitution establishes:
The investment of the State in education, science and technology must be growing and sustained, in correspondence with the levels of macroeconomic performance of the country. The law will consign the minimum amounts and the percentages corresponding to said investment. In no case may transfers of funds consigned to finance the development of these areas be made.
“In his inaugural speech, President Luis Abinader promised to increase the education budget by 10 billion pesos. In 2021, the sum of RD $5,229 million pesos was taken from the MINERD. At the end of the year, the MINERD stopped executing the sum of RD $8,545 million. It barely allocated 27% of what was allocated for the construction of works that remain paralyzed. They achieved the lowest investment in education in the last 10 years (3.49% of GDP)” indicated the former Minister of Labor.
Francisco expressed that removing more than 5 billion pesos to allocate them for re-election, and thereby discontinue the process of construction and development of childcare centers for children between 0 and 5 years old: “That cries before the eyes of God and really what it expresses is that they do not realize the reality that the Dominican people live, we really have, all of us, to radically oppose that claim that after so many struggles, education is reduced by 4%.
He is a candidate for the presidency of the Republic, he concluded by saying that a total of RD$ 12,795 million have been reduced to the MINERD in the last 2 years that: “They could have been destined to promote the development plans and programs consigned in the form of commitments in the Pact National Program for Educational Reform (Universalize Extended School Day, Comprehensive Care for Early Childhood, Teacher Education and Training Programs, Programs for Institutional Strengthening of the MINERD, etc…)”.
