"Crisis HQ presents proposals for tougher measures, state expected to make such a decision"

Photo: Tanjug/AP

Minister of Education, Science and Technological Development Branko Ruzic says that proposals to introduce stricter measures have been presented at the session of the Crisis HQ for the fight against coronavirus, who met on Monday, adding that he expected that the new decision of the state would be such.

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"At the session of the Crisis HQ, we had various proposals and recommendations that will be summarized in writing and submitted to Prime Minister Ana Brnabic as an official recommendation. The proposals go in the direction of even stricter measures," Ruzic told TV Vojvodina last night.

According to him, the situation is alarming and the "absorption capacity" of hospitals is decreasing, not because of the lack of capacity, but because, "as he understood it," og the fact that about 10 percent of healthcare workers are infected.

"Certainly, this recommendation of the health portion of the Crisis HQ will be translated into a decision of the Government of Serbia in, I assume, the form of stricter measures, bearing in mind the figures we are receiving," the minister stated.

Speaking about the application of measures in schools, he stressed that switching to online classes does not mean the closing of schools, noting that the educational process will not stop.

"Based on the recommendations of the health portion of the Crisis HQ, we passed such a decree due to the general epidemiological situation in society. If we were to look at the situation in the educational system, it is not only not alarming, but it is not even problematic, so it did not indicate the need to do something like that," said Ruzic.

Photo: Tanjug/Dimitrije Nikolic/bs

Commenting on the demands of some trade unions to introduce online teaching for lower grades of primary schools, he said that he was against it.

"When it comes to classes from the first to the fourth grade, it is primarily an assessment of educational professionals, taking into account the epidemiological situation, we know that there is the least transmission of the virus there. Elementary literacy, work ethics are acquired at the youngest age," the minister pointed out.

Commenting on the case from the vicinity of Kladovo, where the principal of a primary school punished a teacher because two children shook hands in the schoolyard, he said that inspectors went there and that a report would be known tomorrow, but, as he added, "if that was the only problem then it doesn't exist" and that decision would not exist.

(Telegraf.rs)