The Municipal Secretariat for Culture and Social Activities will provide a set of textbooks for pupils of the first, second and third grade of the elementary schools in the area of the Tivat Municipality.
Unlike the previous years, when the Tivat Municipality provided support only to pupils in the first year of schooling, the 2019/2020 school year will cover all the children from the first cycle i.e., the first three grades of the elementary school.
"Students belonging to the Roma-Egyptian population will receive free textbooks as support from the relevant ministry, as has been the practice so far," said mayor of Tivat Sinisa Kusovac.
The municipality did not state how much purchasing the free textbooks for another two generations of Tivat pupils will cost.
Kusovac, however, at the last session of the local parliament on Tuesday, in controversy with the opposition delegates, said that 18,000 euros for the then-adopted revision budget, increased the item "other transfers to individuals - pupils and students", and will be aimed at buying textbooks for the first three grades. This money was originally planned for tourist events - like the organization of the second International Summer Carnival in Tivat, but Kusovac diverted it to support the local administration for the parents of the youngest pupils in Tivat.
Thus, in September, half a year before the regular local elections in this town, the Tivat Municipality will give away free textbooks for all the children up to the third grade of the elementary school.
Tivat's local DPS-SD-HGI administration in the previous years was the target of fierce criticism of the opposition that, like some other cities in Montenegro, should provide free textbooks for students of all nine grades of primary school, but its leaders always justified it with the alleged lack of money and claimed that the municipality has only money to buy the books for the first-grade pupils.
Now, in front of the local elections to be held in March 2020, the administration has decided to include another two generations of Tivat pupils in this action, and to facilitate financial burden on their parents.
Text by Sinisa Lukovic, on June 21st, 2019, read more at Vijesti
