07.04.2011A press conference concerning the results from the Program “Educational Integration of the Children and the Students from the Ethnic Minorities” was held
The competition “Educational integration of the children and the students from the ethnic minorities” under an Operational Program “Human Resources Development” is about to be vitiated. After the results were announced one year late, they showed that 90 % of the submitted projects were rejected. Thus, contracts for 7.5 millions leva will be signed instead of 12 millions leva, as it was envisaged at the competition announcement. Among the approved projects there is not an NGO, working for an educational integration of the Roma community. This was announced during a press conference on 5th April in the press club of the BTA by the Chairman of the Center for Interethnic Dialogue and Tolerance “Amalipe” Mr. Deyan Kolev.
The reason for the rejection of 90 % of the submitted projects is that they include not only students from the minorities, but from the majority also!, says a letter of the Ministry of the education. Copies of the letter were shown during the press conference. The Roma organizations steadily objected to the absurd interpretation for ineligibility of the costs for children from the majority and they consider that the integration is impossible without the participation of children from all ethnicities. They initiated conversations with the Ministry of education, the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy and the Minister for management of funds from EU Mr. Tomislav Donchev for going out from the situation.
The answer that we received and was published on the site of the Ministry of education, says: "Due to the ambiguous interpretation of the guidelines for applying of the operation in the evaluation of project proposals were not optimal conditions for the implementation of integration activities”. The team of Sergey Ignatov commits to the immediate announcement of the next phase of the program, as well as to remove ambiguities and interpretations in the application package. Will be announced and the long-proposed measure for re-integration of children who dropped out from school and this will happen to the forthcoming session of the Steering Committee of the Operational Program “Human Resources Development”, promised the Ministry.
Rumen Sechkov from S.E.G.A. explained, that there is not a control on spending the funds, which the Ministry of Education, Youth and Science receives as a concrete beneficiary under the OP HRD, and it is about hundreds of millions. Only for this year, the envisaged funds are over 500 millions of leva. According to Sechkov, often these are activities, which have been covered by the state budget and now they were transferred to the Operational Program.
These conclusions were also supported by Georgi Bogdanov, an observer in the Steering Committee of the OP HRD from the group of the social organizations. He mentioned, that there is a similar situation and in the other priority axes of the program: at the last session of the Committee the institutions shared in this way over 1 milliard leva.
The journalists asked lots of questions about the educational status of the Roma and about the efforts, which the organizations undertake in this direction. They received detailed answers, supported by concrete figures. In the end of the press conference was announced, that 13 April is the deadline to resolve the misunderstandings which aroused around the program “Educational integration of the children and the students from the ethnic minorities”: by then the organizations will continue the discussions with the Ministry of education, youth and science and the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy.
