Education and health protection are in the focus of attention of the President RB Rustem Khamitov

The current situation in the sphere of education and medical care has become one of the main questions, being under discussion at the meeting of the President RB Rustem Khamitov with the activists of the Trade-Union Federation RB, held yesterday.

The main problem the education employees face today is very low level of wages. For today it makes up 9,9 thousand rubles in Bashkortostan on average. This is only the 47th index in Russia and the sixth one in Volga federal district. The wages of pedagogues make up only 64% of the average wage in the Republic.

Not long ago the education employees were given the hope that their wages would be increased at the expense of optimization of the whole staff in the education branch. But as the chairman of the Republican pedagogical trade-union Svetlana Pronina reported, though 5,8 thousand pedagogues have been reduced in 2009, the rest of the working teachers failed to feel any rise of their salaries.

“It is clear the optimization will continue but this measure should be socially reasonable and thoroughly planned” – Svetlana Pronina says – “Since it still doesn’t give any substantial growth of our wages, it also looks negative because the pedagogues, falling under reduction, turn out to be jobless and there is no need to wait for anything good of that”.

One more problem is the turning of the educational institutions to the status of the autonomous ones. In opinion of the trade-unions this process also should be thoroughly balanced and can’t be applied everywhere. “If we start turning all our schools to the status of the autonomous institutions right now, many of them won’t be able to survive, because the major part of their financing will lie on the shoulders of the consumers of their services and can the population keep them?”

Along with the abovementioned problems there is one more one – this is the shortage of the kindergartens in the Republic.

“The situation in this sphere today is that we stimulate the growth of birth rate, erect new schools but don’t see that there is the gap between the birth of baby and the beginning of his school years” – Rustem Khamitov said – “and the problem with the kindergartens should be solved”.

Other social problems of the budget employees are also concerned with their low ages and the supply with flats is one of the most urgent ones. Understanding that in the nearest future one can’t wait for the essential rise of the wages the pedagogues and medics figure on the goal-oriented programs, aimed at the supply of teachers and medics with the housing. They hope the majority of these problems will be solved by the new leadership of Bashkortostan.