‘Cruel’ cuts in education

The department that tries to encourage students to pursue science subjects, to make up for the national lack of interest in this important field, had its budget slashed by 71 per cent, Labour Party education spokesman Evarist Bartolo said yesterday.

The Labour Party has been unveiling details of the 2012 budget cut of €40 million that it says the EU has demanded to ensure the deficit remains below three per cent of the GDP.

The government holds the cuts are voluntary and prompted by the need to have resources in reserve to safeguard employment in the face of a deteriorating international financial situation.

Yesterday, Mr Bartolo unveiled a range of “cruel” cuts in the educational budget amounting to a total of €7.6 million that he said would impact the most vulnerable.

These cuts, which Mr Bartolo obtained through “a whistleblower” at the Finance Ministry, include a €2.5 million cut to the budget of the University of Malta, €770,000 to the Malta College of Arts Science and Technology and €100,000 in student maintenance grants, or stipends.

The budget for the government’s Development of Science Centre was cut from an already low of €14,000 to €4,000, he said, stressing that Malta needed to attract students to the sciences.

The Education Ministry defended itself, pointing out that its budget for this year was €15.4 million more than last year’s. It said it had been careful to ensure that the cuts would not be in capital investment or essential services.

However, during a press conference at the PL headquarters, Mr Bartolo singled out the example of the 14 per cent cut for the Specific Learning Disability Unit that catered for people with dyslexia. The budget was being reduced from a measly €14,000 to an even worse €12,000.

“We are already losing a lot of students to dyslexia. It is estimated that three to four children per class are dyslexic and we are losing them,” he said.

Mr Bartolo accused the government of lying when, in January, it issued a press release saying it did not plan to make cuts from the education budget. He later learnt that some time earlier, Finance Minister Tonio Fenech had informed Education Minister Dolores Cristina about a cut of €7.6 million.

He produced a letter sent to the Foundation for Educational Services this month informing employees that their budget had been slashed by five per cent. The foundation helps children acquire basic literacy skills, he explained.

Labour spokesman on higher education Owen Bonnici pointed out that University rector Juanito Camilleri had said the university needed a further investment of €8 million a year until 2015. Now the budget was being cut by over €2 million.

He said the government was also reducing the stipend budget and it was still not clear how this would work. “This is a dangerous game – reducing money from education… I call on the government not to pursue this anti-social attitude,” he said.

Mt Carmel ‘worst hit’

Mount Carmel Hospital has been the hardest hit by cutbacks in the health sector, with a reduction of €1.2 million in its budget, according to the Labour Party.

Moreover, the government would be reducing its planned spend on Karin Grech Hospital by €500,000, €356,000 from health screening programmes and €300,000 from primary healthcare.

Labour spokesman on health Marie Louise Coliero Preca gave details of the €8.5 million budgetary cutback affecting the health sector.

She said the cuts at Mount Carmel would excacerbate problems already faced at the hospital, including inadequate facilities and a shortage of staff.

Such cuts led one to wonder how the government could be believed when it said it wanted to improve services to reduce pressure on Mater Dei Hospital.

There will also be a €200,000 cut in spending on the national cancer plan, a €60,000 cut in the allocation for the strategy on obesity, €100,000 from postgraduate training, €20,000 from the budget for the congress of nurses and €75,000 from the blood transfusion service.

In its reaction, the government did not comment on the cuts but insisted the budget allocated for the health sector this year was €29 million more than it was last year; a total investment of €405.4 million.

It said more than a million services were given in the community last year with health centre doctors examining 427,725 patients, an increase of more than 129,000 over 2008.

Public clinic doctors carried out 155,187 examinations in 2008, which increased to 192,229 last year. Moreover, 12,555 home visits were carried out by health centre doctors last year to patients who could not leave their home.