The bill for the creation of the Deputy Ministry of Culture is expected to be submitted to the Plenary soon, with the Chairman of the Education Committee calling on everyone to put the importance of this project above all else, rather than allowing vested interests to influence final decisions.
According to Committee Chairman Pavlos Mylonas, the article-by-article discussion of the bill has been completed, a "painstaking and difficult effort," he said, that began in early October and will be completed in the next few weeks, to be forwarded to the plenary for a vote.
Mylonas said it wasa crucial issue and raised the question of whether "this society, this people, this state feel that they need the upgrading of their culture and the Ministry of Culture or whether interests and petty politics can influence our final decisions."
"I think that this place and this history of this place deserves the promotion of exactly our culture through a State Ministry of Culture," he concluded.
DISY MP Giorgos Karoullas said that the final text moves in the spirit and philosophy as submitted by the Ministry of Education and Culture and called on everyone to face their responsibilities when it is submitted to the plenary for voting, "so that culture is now put under a holistic, systematic and systemic view for the benefit of culture itself and our state."
AKEL MP Christos Christofias said his party had tabled proposals to amend the bill to address its significant shortcomings. "We reserve the right to submit several of them as amendments to the plenary session of the House of Representatives in the hope that in the end it will become a Deputy Ministry of Culture, which will truly serve culture and its institutions," he added. He also said that they repeatedly asked the Ministry of Education and Culture to submit an organisational chart with the structure of the Deputy Ministry, but to date they have refused to formally submit an organisational chart, even though it will not be included in the legislation. "We demanded to know before we voted how the Deputy Ministry would be structured and they were satisfied with sketchy answers. We don't know why this treatment, if it is a state secret what the structure of the new deputy ministry will be," he said.
Open University of Cyprus budget
The committee also discussed the budget of the Open University of Cyprus with MPs urgently raising the need to find other ways so that the top institution does not pay €800,000 a year in rent.
Mr. Karoullas said that the Open University of Cyprus is doing an important work, with important actions and that both the acquisition of owners of emblematic buildings and any actions to develop programmes for students from foreign countries should be priorities, so that it can be freed from the tactics of renting and this €800,000 per year can be used for the benefit of acquiring privately owned buildings.
DIKO MP Chrysanthos Savvidis said that apart from the fact that the about €12m spent on rents over 15 years "went up in smoke", he was also troubled by the decline in the University's student population in recent years. "To this end we recommended some measures to be taken, but on the other hand we believe in lifelong learning and we need the University to grow," he said.
PPP MP Alekos Tryfonidis said they urgently raised the issue of rent so that solutions could be found either with other government sites or in other state universities to house the administrative offices of the Open University to avoid this waste and channel this amount to useful programmes of the university.
He said they also raised as a matter of utmost importance by the party, the market research that both the Open University and the but should do to provide degrees and postgraduate degrees that would be useful to the local economy and give the opportunity to maximise the growth of the country.
Test to Stay
In statements after the Committee meeting, some members also referred to the Test to Stay measure. Christofias said that the way the measure was finally being implemented "we cannot but express our dissatisfaction with the suffering
that students, parents and teachers are enduring."
He said it was clear that those in power "are out of touch with the reality that people are experiencing."
He said that it was clear that those in power "are out of touch with the reality that people are experiencing. He said that mobile units for rape tests are set up regionally and not in every school, resulting in students who were declared as close contacts running with their parents to another school for the test every morning. In addition to the health risk inherent in this controversial measure, he said, we also have the sloppiness with which the Ministry of Education continues to deal with the situation. He also said that due to lack of ventilation in schools, "which the Ministry tells us will be installed sometime in the future," children and teachers are freezing every day since they are required by protocols to have open doors and windows. He called on the Education Minister to take responsibility.
Mr Savides said his party would wait 15 days to see the results of the Test to Stay, i.e. whether dispersal would be reduced. "In America, the Test to Stay system may have worked because it has been combined with some other measures such as reducing the number of students per class, and having ventilated classrooms. We will wait and judge this measure accordingly," he concluded."
Source: CNA
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