Today begins the second week in which children will not be in school. By rejecting the offer to increase salaries by 10%, SONK decided to continue with blackmail that is only to the detriment of students’ education and complicates the daily lives of parents, Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski wrote on Facebook.

The government is making serious efforts to deal with the crisis, to amortize the price increases and to provide a dignified life for our citizens, especially for the most vulnerable. Even in such difficult conditions of the global crisis, we are probably the only Government that enabled a historic increase in salaries and pensions and strongly supported the citizens financially. Despite everything, SONK believes that the salary increase of 2,500 denars is small. In conditions when with the anti-crisis measures adopted by the government, the bills of the citizens are lower by 4,000 denars per month. This simply cannot be considered a reasonable attitude but an obvious pressure with which it is evident that SONK puts personal interests before those of children, said Kovacevski.

From 2017 until today, writes the Prime Minister, salaries in education have increased by 21%. With these additional 10% it would be a 31% increase which for SONK in conditions of global economic crisis is not enough. For comparison, in five years, from 2011 to 2016, salaries in education were increased by only 4%.

The government is doing everything possible to maintain the dialogue and find a common language, but the demands and attitude of SONK are completely unacceptable. The place of the children is in the schools and in this situation only SONK and the management are responsible for the fact that they do not exercise the right to education, said Prime Minister Kovacevski.