In the name of
the Roma Community of Kiskunfélegyháza, the Citizens Association for Roma Rights
(CAROR) is estabilished with the goal to call attention upon the problem
of not having elementary school in Bankfalu anymore.
In 2009, the
Ministry of Education has decided to close the elementary school in Bankfalu.
This has left children of around 300 families (!) with no nearby school. As a
consequence, they need to travel long distance and face additional costs, which
leads to less attendance and has many short term and long term consequences.
The Constitution
and the Law on Education in Hungary asks for equal access to education for
everyone, and the local authorities are responsible for realising this. Thus,
we ask the Local Office of the Ministry of Education to change the situation
and reopen the school.
You can check it on Youtube:
Hungarian National Television broadcasted it the following way:
Public Forum
Demonstration
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You can check it on Youtube:
Press Conference
On the 26th of October, our activist group organized a press conference in the City Hall in Kiskunfélegyháza. Our goal was to present our community's problem to the media and aimed to further spread the message. We gathered representatives from local, national and international media, presented and analyzed the issue of the closed school in our town.
Public Forum
Three months after the press conference we held our forum in the Community House where everyone had the oppurtunity to tell her/his thought or opinion. During the discussion we signed a petition which contained our suggestion to Mr Krisztian Kapus for solving this problem.
You can check our film here:
Demonstration
Our activist group
from CAROR organized a protest today in front of the City Hall demanding reopen the school in
our town. We gathered one hundred people. Local authorities will start working on this
problem tomorrow, promised the mayor of Kiskunfélegyháza, Mr Kapus.
Kapus wasn’t willing to speak with us, but we
were persistent so he came out and try to convince us to go home. When he
realized that we won’t give up, he invited us in his office and start
negotiating the problem.
The documents written by experts from the Ministry of Education, which show that there is a possibility to solve the
problem, and documents were given to him. Activist group also reminded him that
there is money in the local budget for this project.
“We relocated the money for school project and
now we don’t have it in our budget. But we will solve this problem after the
election period” said the Mayor.
This problem has existed for three years in
this town, reminded spokesperson of this group, Mr Orbán Kolompár and he add that
local authorities promised that they will solve it in a first year of their
mandat.
Our group already have prepared a petition for
this cause which was assigned by 30.000 people and it was sent to the Mayor one
month ago. Since then there has been no response from him.
If the Mayor doesn’t start working on this
problem tomorrow group of activists will paralize whole town and organize even
bigger protest. Of course, they don’t have patient anymore so they won’t wait
the end of the elections process, emphasized Kolompár.
Meeting the Authorities
One month after the
demonstration, we managed to schedule an appointment with the local authorities
in Kiskunfélegyháza, on which we presented the problem of the
closed school in Bankfalu and handed in our signed petition.
On the side of the
authorities, we met the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of the town, as well as two
other members of their offices. The activist group was
represented by our spokesperson Leila, a member of the Roma community Mr István as a father, and Mr Goce as a legal and sociological expert.
The meeting began by
us presenting the closing of the school as a problem we want to be solved, and
by presenting our petition signed by citizens of Kiskunfélegyháza. The Major and his assistants were not
the most welcoming and interested audience, and have most of the time tried to
transfer responsibility to other bodies.
In the end, we received
a promise that we will receive an answer to the petition in thirty days. This
is how we ended the meeting, as the Mayor had another important meeting to
attend immediately after that.
Seing the results of the meeting, we concluded that we
need to continue pressuring, and meet the Mayor and Deputy Mayor again, as many
times as needed, and emphasise that
responsibility indeed lays within their hands.
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Istvan and other activist of the group !
ReplyDeleteNice job!:-)
Greatings from the GLASSCYCLING group.