The Acting Minister of Education has announced that he will donate his salary to a childcare centre. Mihai Dimian says that he will work without pay until the end of his mandate.
Mihai Dimian announced on Facebook that he will donate his ministerial salary to the “St. Hierarch Leontie” Children’s Home in Rădăuți.
The minister’s reaction comes after the criticism that was brought to the dignitary, following the debate in Parliament on the mental health of children, organized by the Education Commission of the Romanian Senate. There Ilinca, a student in the 5th grade, spoke about the problems faced by the students, at the end she was overcome with tears, and during the intervention the minister was looking at the phone.
“I’m sorry if I offended anyone, but I invite you to watch the whole event, not just that extract, to draw conclusions, in the given context. You can watch the interventions of other students, you can talk to participants to form an opinion about what happened at this event, you can respond to Ilinca’s message that was addressed to everyone (“you”, teachers, parents) not just to me, in particular. As for me, I hope you’ll forgive me if you think I made a mistake and I work without payment in the remaining days of this interim mandate, donating the minister’s salary to the “St. Hierarch Leontie”. I’m just a man. I don’t have an image team, a party, a PR apparatus or sophisticated communication mechanisms behind me. I’m interested in people and what I can concretely do for them from the position I’m in. I didn’t accept this position in such a difficult time and I’m not staying away from my family for sterile confrontations, for image or communication games, but from the conviction that systems can be improved through serious work and responsible decisions“, the minister wrote on Facebook.
Mihai Dimian explained why he was looking at his phone during the emotional speech given by a fifth-grade student, after the moment caused reactions in the public space.
“I responded to that invitation to a debate (…) and said from the beginning that, given the day’s activities, i had woken up at 2:00 am to work to a bill, amendments to a bill that is urgent in order not to lose the so-called money associated with the PNRR milestone on research”, said the minister.
He explained that, in parallel, there were also discussions about the wage law in education, and his colleagues were participating in the negotiations.
“The draft law on the remuneration of Romanian education was also under discussion (…) and also at 15:00 there was a report on the PNRR projects that are to enter into negotiations with the European Commission and there were over 4,000 projects that were worked on”, Dimian said.
The minister stated that at the time he checked the phone, several urgent messages had been collected.
“At the time, several messages had been collected and some were related to these emergencies, the project regarding the digitization of research (the secretary of state was writing to me about it), colleagues who were in negotiations with the wage law and reporting to the PNRR which was until 3:00 p.m., and there was talk of extending the deadline until the next day, which happened.” he explained.
