Draxler: Some Teachers Might Not Have Seen Hikes on Their Payslips

Bratislava, January 27 (TASR) – Some teachers might not have seen a 22-percent hike on their payslips that the Education, Science, research and Sport Ministry and Prime Minister Robert Fico talked about recently, as Juraj Draxler conceded on Wednesday.

Speaking in a discussion organised by the initiative Enough, Let’s Not Gamble With Future of Slovakia, Draxler suggested that the reason behind this unequal distribution is that money often get lost within the non-transparent education system.
“Therefore, it’s necessary to do a larger clean-up in regional education finances,” he said, adding that there are no clear rules on how to distribute the resources and the model how they trickle down to individual salaries.
The minister also insists that the demands raised by protesting teachers cannot be accommodated straight away. “Once again, I call upon the activists to give it real consideration whether joining the dialogue with professional organisations and participating in the draft that makes way into a future government’s manifesto isn’t a more pragmatic approach,” said Draxler.
He stressed that additional funding of €650 million for 2016, as demanded by the discontent teachers, represents an enormous figure that cannot be okayed within a few days.
Draxler, who has been one of several non-party affiliated or technocrat ministers during this term in office, says that he doesn’t plan a long political career, but stands ready to become the education minister after the 2016 election. “I need to continue to support people in the ministry, so that we can prepare responsible reforms also in the post-2016 period.”