A GOVERNMENT proposal for parents to contribute to school heating costs has sparked a furious reaction from the Parents’ Association.
The group yesterday lashed out at the Education Ministry initiative calling on parents to cover 50 per cent of the cost to install central heating at all schools.
The proposal was discussed in a charged atmosphere at the House Education Committee.
Out of 457 schools, both elementary and secondary, only 275 have central heating.
“We plan to install central heating at the remaining schools by 2004,” ministry official Petros Kareklas told the Committee.
“But some schools’ parents’ unions have volunteered to cover half the expense in order to speed up the procedures. That is why we made this proposal,” he explained.
DIKO deputy Marios Matsakis accused the ministry of taking advantage of parents: “It’s only natural that parents would do just anything to make sure their children don’t freeze for seven hours every day. And they are not willing to wait for two or three years for the government to take care of the problem. The ministry is taking advantage of that, instead of acting quickly to provide heating to all schools.”
But Kareklas insisted that technical service officials were too busy to install central heating at all schools immediately.
Matsakis retorted: “There are children with health problems and children who are sick for almost the entire winter period because their classrooms are not heated properly. You should treat this matter as a priority.
“How difficult can it be to install central heating at a couple of hundred schools?” he wondered.
Stavros Stavrou, the president of the secondary schoolteachers’ union OELMEK, felt that the government’s three-year plan was reasonable.
“But if we look at this from a student’s point of view we’ll realise it is not that simple. If I tell a student that he has to be patient and stand the cold for two more years, I will sound paranoid,” Stavrou said.
The chairman of the Parents’ Association, Elias Demetriou, who vehemently opposed the idea of parents paying for school heating, said: “We have issued a circular urging parents’ unions to defy this proposal. There is no way we will have some schools with heating and some without just because some unions have bigger budgets than others.”
Eliades called on the Education Ministry to withdraw its proposal and “quit manipulating parents’ soft spots.”
Haris Charalambous, secretary general of the elementary and nursery schools’ union POED, complained to the Committee that there were no provisions for installing central heating at nursery schools.
After failing to any official response on the matter, he wondered: “Can four-year-old children stand the cold more than elder pupils?”
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