President Mario Abdo
ASUNCION, April 7 (NNN-TELESUR) — The Minister of Education will be questioned next week over a schooling crisis that has led thousands of students to continue to strike in 37 schools across Paraguay as 40,000 schoolchildren have gone without classes since the beginning of the academic year.
Representatives of the National Federation of Secondary Students (FENAES) presented a letter Wednesday addressed to the President of the National Congress, Silvio Ovelar, requesting that the Minister of Education and Sciences Eduardo Petta be questioned in relation to Paraguay’s education system crisis.
Petta is expected to be questioned next week by the Chamber of Senators to answer to the matter of teacher hiring affecting thousands of students across the country.
“We have been losing classes for more than two months, and we can not allow the minister’s incapacity to pass through this crisis,” National Federation of Secondary Students coordinator Isis Coronel told Noticias Paraguay.
Paraguayan President Mario Abdo Benítez expressed his support for the education minister, who has been criticized for his weak management. “This is going to be solved next week,” he said of resolving the crisis of replacing nearly 3,000 teachers.
In Asuncion, youth union members of FENAES held classes in the Plaza de Armas in front of the National Parliament, as there is a need for teachers in more than 2,000 public schools.
“Our classmates cannot continue to lose classes, the Ministry of Education and Sciences (MEC) had to anticipate the massive retirement of teachers,” said the spokesperson of the student group, Alejandra Orrego.
For Mauricio Vazquez, also a spokesman, the minister is responsible for what happens “for his incompetence.”
Secondary schools across the country are currently classified as “inoperative” by MEC due to the unexpected retirement of thousands of teachers preventing more than 200 public institutions from commencing the school year. — NNN-TELESUR
