We are witnessing silence from the Ministry of Education and Culture about the half a million euros spent on printed temporary textbooks. Silence about the huge scandal through which the government again finds space and a way to conduct experiments that cost us dearly. They are silent and did not answer the questions to which the public is waiting for answers. The Ministry of Education, instead of providing textbooks for students in accordance with legal obligations, implements a contract for the preparation, printing, and distribution of disposable materials in primary education worth half a million euros, Marija Miteva from VMRO-DPMNE pointed out at today’s press conference.

Dear citizens, these materials are only valid for 3 months, be careful… half a million euros for the first quarter of the school year, and only for the first, second, fourth and fifth grades. In numbers, these are scripts for only 80,000 students. In addition, the application of these temporary textbooks in the further educational process has not yet been determined, most likely they will not be used at all, or perhaps they will be used for an adequate replacement where textbooks will be missing, as we have seen, this has become a practice over the years. Half a million euros were spent on one use. The fact that these so-called scripts are a set of materials that the government summarized from last year’s textbooks and part of the new ones. Namely, we are talking about only one script – a textbook, be careful, only one script of a hundred pages containing all the teaching subjects. In addition, the content of this script is a collection of existing, last year’s textbooks and just divided into parts to make learning materials, says Miteva.

She adds that there is no sense of responsibility from Minister Shaqiri, when asked by journalists how much it cost the state to print these temporary scripts – he replied he does not know, he does not have that data. We know – those temporary materials cost 530 thousand euros.

The Ministry of Education and Culture must answer – who approved these materials, why is it being paid for double printing when textbooks could be printed knowing that this script is a collection of educational material from last year, and most importantly who benefits and who loses from double payment for the same work? The public is waiting for answers, Miteva said.