Bad News for Teachers of the 1990s

The exact number of teachers of the years HINA-99 and budget costs continue to be a problem in the Bill regulating the status of Albanian education workers of the Republic of Kosovo from the 1990/91 school year to the 1998/99 school year.

In public hearing concerning this bill, which has been approved in the first reading, the Ministry of Finance and the International Monetary Fund have presented their reserves about the budget impact the implementation of this bill will have if the data is not presented correctly for the number of those who will benefit.

Meanwhile, the sponsor of this bill, the Education Ministry, SBASK, have voiced stance that the bill does not overload it. The MF in financial terms, because all data is correct.

Deputy Finance Minister Fatmir Gashi has called the financial cost the main problem at this moment that is challenging the Ministry of Finance very much.

According to him, the MF has nothing against this bill, but only has reserves regarding budgetary costs.

And we think that the law regarding beneficiaries should be very concious, much more precise, and to explain exactly what it takes to make the cost of the law and I want to state that in the medium-term cost of 2019-2021, these expenses are not locked up because we haven't been able to do their calculations. We've made an estimate of the demand that came out of August and our account is 16 million and 700 thousand, which is later calculated is not enough, and after some other accounts, the annual cost comes up to about 32m euros. All of these are problems that bring the MF to budget planning and planning of exits”, Gashi said.

Even the chief of the International Monetary Fund (FMN) in Kosovo, Ruud Vermeulen, has demanded that this bill be rejected, because it has great financial costs and if other categories require the same thing then the country's budget will not afford it.

Allow me to repeat that we highly appreciate teacher service and that we are not against any kind of compensation for the teachers' work in 1999 as such, but we have said that the current bill in the current form is very harmful to the budget for many years to come. We think that the current bill in its current form would weaken the already unfinanced pension system, create a permanent vacuum in the budget and collect more productive expenditures on other priorities such as education, health care and infrastructure”, Vermeulen stressed.

Isni Kryeziu of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology stressed that just Article 6 of the bill determines the categories of who benefits. While he said that the number of those who would benefit is also known correctly, why the number will go up in years to come.

There is no dilemma about discussions about the number of beneficiaries from this law. It's perfectly clear, it's precise in Article 6 and at the financial cost we've estimated each year. Since we've been planning with the Ministry of Finance, if we start implementing this law, the last four months of this year, we've calculated, since I agree with the information that the Union has, that this number that we have in a financial statement is much smaller than the one that represents here because some of them are already dead today. But we have a number of 9656 workers who will make their pension”, Kryeziu said.

SBASK's representative, Ymer Ymer, said the bill will benefit 5987 beneficiaries because over 3 thousand have died. The budgetary cost, according to a version the Ministry of Finance itself has given, is an official document, says that in the first year, 9656 retired pension in education of that period.

It's a very swollen number because this number is not estimated to have died. It's estimated that all those retired 27 years ago are still alive. So, it's estimated they're over 100 years old, all those pensioners. According to some of our close estimates and based on statistics of the statistics entity that life expectancy in Kosovo is 73 years, it turns out that some 3669 people have died of them. Now if we start living this law, exactly 5987 people --” -- Ymer stressed.

Civil society has also voiced opposition to the huge budgetary costs this bill will have.

Even, according to Agron Demit from GAP, with the adoption of the bill on salaries in public service, the cost of this bill will increase even more.

Under current salaries, according to Demit, there will be 650m euros of total cost to implement the bill, until, with the implementation of the wage bill, it will reach 766m euros.

We are now at the time when we are discussing the bill on salaries in public service. It automatically raises the basic wage in education on the basis of reports we have of 405 euros to 466 euros and indirectly affects the law so that we can discuss it here. And of the 32 million that the deputy minister mentioned, it now increases to 37.2 million a year if these two bills are passed in form”, Demi stressed.

However, August and SBASK support have been given to the Kosovo Assembly deputies.

AAK MP Teuta Haxhiu has said it should be expected for five years to bring this bill to the Assembly.

“Five years in a row hosted the Kosovo Assembly to come to the Assembly, and now we as deputies have had it in our first reading and it's not very important when it coincides with anyone to say whether it was voted in the Assembly or not voted in the Parliament. MPs are representatives of citizens who have given unanimous votes to all political subjects”, she said.

While MP Nezir Cocaj from the PDK has indicated that teachers should not equal any categories, especially those in the 1990s-99s. But there have been some concerns.

I've been hoping a lot today since the acting participants of this public hearing will have something more concrete. It is of concern to me that the three ministries that are part of a Government have no concrete information either of the number of teachers or of the budgetary costs and of the Education Union”, Chocaj said.

The bill regulating the status of Albanian education workers of the Republic of Kosovo from the 1990/91 school year to 1998/99 has been adopted in principle by the Parliament's deputies. After reviewing the Commission for Education, the bill is expected to come up for approval in the plenary session.