Education reforms in Kamenica, mayors support Central Kastrati

The Council of Mayors has, in this case, called for the implementation of the legal opinion of the Office of Prime Minister, which gives the mayor of Kamenica the right in his acts considered legal.

At a joint meeting with representatives of the Prime Minister's Office Legal Office, officials of the Ministry of Education and Science, chairman of the Kamenica municipality. Remaining Kastrati and the representative of the Kosovo Commission Association (AKK), have presented their arguments regarding the intervention the Ministry of Education and Science has made to municipalities in its own competencies, under the Law on Local Self-Government, so Legal opinion is back in favour of the municipalities and soon we also await the annulment of the U.A. (MASH) No. 104/2020th Kosovo Prime Minister's side.

As it is known, the Ministry of Education and Science in September 2020 has approved the No.104/20 for the Creations and Procedures of the Foundation and Rest of the Pre-university Education Institutions, with which it has intervened in the pre-Kosovo municipality's personal competencies with the Constitution of Kosovo and regulated with Law No. L- 040 for Local Self-government”, the AKK report said.

Further in the announcement, it stresses that the Council of Kosovo Mayors, representing all local government in Kosovo, requires immediate annulment of this Guidance because there are direct interventions of central power in local government.

“Legal Orpinion of the Prime Minister's Office says, among other things: “In the end, the Legal Office is of the opinion that: The Ministry of Education and Science, in the case of the release of Administrative Guidance No.104/20, has not had sufficient legal grounds for obtaining competence for establishing pre-university educational institutions, but only for setting the criteria under which municipalities, in exercising their own competencies, would establish these institutions. This is because the establishment and rest of pre-university education institutions are not explicitly defined, nor is it meant as the area of responsibility, or as the duty of the UN, whether with the (QRK) Order No.07/2020 for Change and

Fulfillment (QRK) No.06/2020 for the Administrative Responsibility Fields of the Office of the Prime Minister and Ministers, or with the laws in power”.

Therefore, the Council of Mayors estimates that the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and neither Minister Nagavci has the right to intervene in municipal competencies in organising primary and middle education, because it is up to the municipality to organise the education system under the laws in force, assign where schools are, and who are teachers”, the report says.

The Council of Mayors has demanded that the Minister of Education halt these tendencies for illegal intervention of local government in the Republic of Kosovo.