Cleaning Ladies Triumph over Education Minister
In a single stroke, the Minister of Education fired around a thousand of cleaning-ladies and other ancillary workers in schools all over Macedonia. When the news hit the media, minister Novkovski abruptly revoked his ministerial decree...
AIM, Skopje, February 21, 2001.
It seems as if the reform of the administrative apparatus has come to a dead end in the Ministry of Education following the decision of education minister Nenad Novkovski to revoke the dismissal notices served to over a 1000 cleaning-ladies and other ancillary school personnel. Novkovski changed his mind and overturned his own decree in a single day, but his change of heart had little to do with any willingness on his part or any humanitarian reasons. Rather, it was the outcome of the gathering of all those designated to become surplus labor in front of the Ministry of Education in Skopje or, more to the point, the fact that all private TV stations in Macedonia aired the upsetting images of the laid off women in tears in their prime news. Red-eyed with crying, the cleaning-ladies dismissed in Minister Novkovski's "Operation Broom" spoke of the ill-fortune that had befallen them, in many instances after over twenty years of dutiful service. The very first weekend after that, the Union of workers employed in education organized a strike whereupon a thousand-strong throng dispatched a unequivocal message to Minister Novkovski: they, the message ran, had no intention of giving up their posts without a fight.
Two days after the strike, the Minister informed the press that he had suspended the dismissal of the unskilled school staff. His decree, he explained, had been misinterpreted and unwarrantedly carried out by several school principals. That very same day, according to Novkovski, in a letter sent to the principals, he instructed them to put a stop to the firing. In order to avoid any future misunderstanding, the Minister also made it known that the reform process will not be thwarted: i.e. the laying off will proceed as planned, but only after a thorough systematization of new posts has been carried out and that, as he put it, will bring about the needed "rationalization of labor" which clearly pertains to a severe cut in manpower. In the future, said the Minister, only those whose posts have been done away with in the rationalization process will be laid off.
That very same day, because of their failure to decipher his decree properly, the strict minister relieved of duty five school principals in Skopje, Veles and Stip, in an obvious attempt to shirk any responsibility on his part for a decision which had provoked such havoc. Need it be said, all the five principals were doing was to enact an order of the Minister himself ?
The dismissed school principals in their turn, justified themselves by citing the ministerial decree ordering them to dismiss all superfluous personnel but for a single cleaning-lady, a cashier and a single night watchman per school, since their duties were to be taken over by Kometa, a Skopje-based security agency believed to be close to the ruling VMRO-DPMNE and a private Skopje firm, Tehnocist, designated to take upon the task of maintaining hygiene in all Skopje schools. In spite of all arguments pointing to the contrary, Minister Novkovski maintained his initial standpoint that the cleaning-ladies' scandal was brought on by school principals who have failed to interpret properly the true spirit of his ministerial decree.
Perhaps the attempt of Novkovski to get rid of the ancillary school personnel in a single stroke has something to do with the fact his Ministry is lagging far behind all others in arrangements for the systematization, i.e. that, in fact, it is the only one not having completed the job. According to announcements coming from the Ministry, the problem of the cleaning-ladies is to be somewhat alleviated by the allotment of a compensation equaling 24 monthly paychecks (around 5 000 DM) to those laid off, while those who are five years short of the legal prerequisite for retirement will be offered a full pension. Unofficially, the manpower cut in the Ministry of Education is to amount to some 7 000 persons, but the process of laying off will be carried out gradually, over a three-year period.
Still, in the eye of the public, Minister Novkovski is the chief villain in the disturbing cleaning-ladies' story. This is best illustrated by the fact that on Monday, the breaking news in the prime time evening news of the most popular Macedonian TV station, privately-owned A-1, befell the information formulated as "Today, the cleaning-ladies gained a victory over minister Novkovski". Even the media partial to the rationalization of the public sector administration concluded that the minister's handling of the problem was a mistake and carried out with undue haste, particularly in respect to the social dimension of the whole issue. The heaviest blow of the revoked ministerial decree was aimed at the socially most endangered portion of the population (in the minister's portfolio, the average monthly pay ranges from 150 to 200 DM). Furthermore, how can one justify the logic of leaving entire schools with a single cleaning-lady or, for that matter, of laying off night-guards, only to replace them with guards supplied by a privately owned firm? Will it, perhaps, cost the tax payers less? Up to now, Novkovski has not offered a single convincing answer to this crucial question. If he does not do so in the near future, the less obvious motives of his ministerial undertaking will become thoroughly apparent.
To conclude, is the needed reduction in the public sector administration to be carried out at the expense of the most needy? No one is denying the necessity of implementing reforms in order to make possible the realization of the World Bank investment in Macedonian economy worth 50 million dollars. But, the unanswered question remains: are those who have the least doomed to pay the highest price for the necessary transition ?
Judging by the hastily made, and consequently swiftly revoked, ministerial decree, the reform in the Ministry of Education has had a melancholy start.
AIM Skopje
NIKOLA STOJANOV