About a hundred citizens of Tivat gathered in the yard of Elementary School "Drago Milović" at a meeting organized by the Council of Parents of that school, in support of the protests "For a society of knowledge" organized in Podgorica by the Association "Parents" and the Educational Community of Montenegro.
In addition to the general dissatisfaction with the state of education in Montenegro, the participants of the meeting in Tivat also expressed their protest due to decades of neglect by the state towards local educational institutions, because no new primary school has been built in that municipality for more than 40 years.
In September, as it was heard, a total of over 1.900 students should attend classes at the Elementary School "Drago Milović", whose central building was built in the early eighties, with a capacity sufficient for only 600 students.
Among the gathered citizens was the President of the Municipality of Tivat Željko Komnenović, who said that he came to the gathering not as a politician, but as a parent of children who today attend the same school building where he entered as a child as the first generation of its students who then enjoyed a spacious, modern and well-equipped school, while his and other children from Tivat now attend classes in an inadequate, small and dilapidated building with numerous technical problems.
The meeting was attended by representatives of almost all political parties in Tivat as interested citizens and parents and thus informally sent a message that the problems with poor school infrastructure and the lack of care that the Government and the Ministry of Education have been demonstrating for Tivat for decades are affecting all its residents equally.
"We express our support to the participants of the protests that are taking place in Podgorica today. We all know what happened at the matriculation exams. Our goal is for students to be children, and for professors to be professors. In Tivat, where we have over 1.900 primary school students enrolled next school year, we want a new, a big school. We want a school where all the children of Tivat will have enough places, regardless of differences, regardless of anything else," said Tamara Milenković, president of the Council of Parents of Elementary School "Drago Milović".
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At her invitation, the gathered people shouted "We want school" and walked through the yard between the buildings of Elementary School "Drago Milović" and High School "Mladost".
Komnenović told reporters that as a parent and citizen of Tivat, he is resigned to the attitude that the Government, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Ecology, Spatial Planning and Urbanism show towards Tivat and its needs in educational infrastructure.
He emphasized that the almost three-year efforts of the local administration to finally begin the construction of a new elementary school in Tvto have so far not borne fruit, even though the Municipality, which is not legally obligated to do so, provided land and a location for the construction of a new school near the sports hall in Župa and found an investor in the company Porto Montenegro, which expressed its willingness to build that facility at its own expense.
In order for this to happen, the state needs to change the current State Study of the location (DSL) "Župa-Bonići" and design a new school building, but this did not happen because the council for the revision of the draft of amendments and additions to the DSL, recently, gave for the fourth time negative opinion on that document.
"This is truly unheard of considering that we have held dozens of meetings with representatives of DSL processors, the audit council and the Government and found solutions that we were told would result in a positive opinion from the council. This was even publicly promised by the Minister of Spatial Planning Ana Novaković Đurović during his recent official visit to Tivat. The most tragic thing in this whole story is that the member of the audit council who refuses to give a positive opinion is a Tivat woman, and I simply cannot believe that this is happening," said Komnenović, explaining that one of the remarks Why can't the new school be built on the location near the sports hall, close to the road?
"Find me one school in Tivat or one school in Podgorica that is not near a road. I will not criticize the urban planning profession, but they must know that Tivat does not have the space or the Municipality of large land complexes in its ownership on which we can build all missing large infrastructural facilities such as schools," Komnenović pointed out, adding that, as a mayor, he requested that the current council for the revision of draft amendments to the DSL Župa-Bonići should be dissolved and a new one should be formed that would objectively look at the problems and needs of the city.
"It is outrageous what the state is doing to Tivat. If someone in Podgorica had said that some investor would donate money to build a new school, I guarantee you that in 15 minutes everything would have been resolved regarding the location and administration, and they are obstructing us in Tivat like this. This year, with luck, the construction of the new primary school in Ktrtoli should finally start, but can you believe that the contractor who was chosen by the Public Works Administration, and who should start work, came to me the other day and announced that he would give up on that because no one from the Ministry of Education or the Public Works Administration had contacted him yet. I begged and begged him not to do that and now we are in a situation where the Municipality always meets and supports this as much as it can the story with the school facilities in Tivat, although it is not necessarily its responsibility, but the children who go to those schools are our children and that is why we do it. However, it should be the job and responsibility of the Government and the Ministry of Education because these are their facilities, and the people of Tivat are the most regular tax payers in Montenegro. The funds that the state collects from this city should go to the development of infrastructure, and I ask you what Tivat gets from that, or what I should answer to people when they rightly ask me, they were protected by bad and cramped schools, no road infrastructure and so on. The time has really come when we simply have to say enough to the authorities in the state," said Komnenović, reminding that Tivat is one of the ten Montenegrin municipalities with positive growth, that more and more people are coming to live in Tivat, and that next school year this city will to have a record number of pupil-champions.
"Where will these children attend nasava, what kind of schools will they enter? I know what problems educators face and I'm sorry for that, but the municipality cannot solve it alone. I'm therefore glad that the whole city came together about this problem and to send a message to the prime minister and the minister of education and the minister of urban planning that the gift has exceeded the measure. They rhetorically support our demands, but when it comes to implementing it, we get a negative result. They finally have to understand the common people, ordinary citizens and their needs and to understand that high politics has nothing to do with this, but only the urgent need for the city to finally get the facility it desperately needs," concluded Komnenović.
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