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Teachers perceive the requirement for 60 percent of the staff to be vaccinated for schools to hold in-person classes as a measure meant to force them get the Covid jab; they think it also creates a divide between teachers and parents and between the vaccinated and unvaccinated, president of the Federation of Education Free Trade Unions (FSLI) Simion Hancescu told AGERPRES today.
"They should completely scrap this criterion, because what the people see is that they are being forced to get the needle. (...) This is everybody's interpretation in all the messages I receive: it is a measure meant to force teachers to get vaccinated, although the education system has one of the highest vaccination rates - at almost 70 percent. What bothers the people a lot is the requirement that the percentage of staff vaccinees be made public on the institutions' websites - no other industry has taken this step, we don't know why it was taken in education, probably to point the finger at the teachers, to turn them into an example for the entire country," said Simion Hancescu.
The union leader also pointed out that the enforcement of the 60 percent vaccinee criterion is unfair because it does not take into account the staff who has gone through the disease without symptoms, as well as the employees with contraindications to vaccination.
The president of the teachers' union explained that as regards the halt of the virus spread, this criterion is useless anyway since most students are unvaccinated and can pass the virus including to vaccinated teachers.
"Our prediction is that face-to-face learning schools will gradually move online because the infection incidence will increase, and here is actually the big issue, because that fairly high plateau is likely to keep constant precisely because of the high risk of spreading from students - let us not forget that there are many commuter students who come from various localities by public transport," Hancescu said, emphasizing that the enforcement of this criterion instead of the one linking school activities to the local infection rate has led to situations where classes run online in localities with an infection rate of less than 3 percent.
"The conclusion is that we don't find this measure is right and it doesn't bring anything good to the system, because in reality in-person education takes place in cities with very high infection rates. The percentage of vaccinated teachers may be quite high in big cities, but let's think that in a classroom with a vaccinated teacher there are 30 students of whom only 3 or 5 might be vaccinated, the rest are not immunised. Therefore the risk is high for both students and teachers, because this is about localities with infection rates higher than 10 percent, in certain cases. And on the other hand, in localities with low incidence rates they must hold online schooling because of the teachers' vaccination rate being around 50 - 55 percent," said Hancescu.
The president of the trade union organization emphasized that the enforcement of this criterion in absence of massive and constant testing of students and teachers demonstrates the impotence of the Romanian state.
"The enforcement of the 60 percent vaccinee requirement is not okay, as long as basic things have not been done in Romania - the Education Ministry and we have been asking since the beginning of the year for testing to be ensured; it would have been much wiser for the state to provide tests for both students and teachers, as well as medicines, because this is the true reason why we have a disaster on our hands: the Romanian state was incapable to procure medicines for the treatment of this disease, as it is in normal countries. It's true that the vaccination rate is high there, but those countries have provided medicines, this is why they have so few deaths - they have cheap or even free testing in place, whilst the situation in Romania is revolting. This is where the impotence of the Romanian state fully shows," concluded Simion Hancescu.
