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Among the employees of 60 preschool centers in Serbia since the beginning of November, more than 700 are infected or isolated due to the suspicion of the corona virus, and the number of positive workers is almost 25 times higher than in September, according to data revealed by Bosiljka Jovanovic , President. Independent Trade Union of Early Childhood Education Workers in Serbia. This is the latest official information available to the only representative union in preschool at the national level, based on the report of the director of Preschool Institutions (PU), writes “Politika”.
– Of the 179 police stations, we asked the number of infected employees, as well as the number of suspects in isolation, but also the number of workers on sick leave for other reasons, because only then can we see how many people are currently outside the system. The data were obtained from 60 PUs. Outside of that, there are no infected people in 11 institutions. There were 15 infected in September and 67 in October, so far in November 369 people have become ill and that figure must be added another 341 employees in isolation whose virus has not been confirmed. The drastic increase in the number of infected is worrying. The fear of being left without staff is justified – specifies Jovanović, and herself in isolation due to symptoms of respiratory diseases.
He points out that there are elementary school principals who, instead of handing over data, tell the presidents of the unions on the premises that they are not obliged to give it to them, and since they regularly hand it over to school administrations, they let them attend to it. And then remember that the Special Collective Agreement establishes that all data related to the employment relationship must be available to the president of the union. The union members had the impression that for some reason the data is hidden and that it is more difficult to bring it where the epidemiological situation is most critical. They believe that data on the total number of educators who are infected or in isolation due to suspected corona should be known by employees and parents.
– According to the data we have, the worst situation is in the kindergartens of the municipality of Čukarica, where 51 employees became ill and 88 are isolated. In Zemun, 39 people were infected along with 12 isolated policemen, in Savski Venac there are 15 patients, 16 isolated. In Pancevo, 13 are infected and 10 are isolated, in Krusevac there are a positive number of positives, nine isolates. Of the employees of the Valjevo Police Department, 27 are corona patients and 10 are isolated, for example, according to Jovanović.
His colleague, Slobodanka Ninić, also secretary of the Independent Union of Early Childhood Education Workers of Serbia, also points out that the number of infected people is not enough to convey the essence of the problem.
– The children are safe. For them, kindergartens are a safe area. We have almost no infected children, but the question arises who will work with them. The number of employees who do not work for justified reasons grows progressively. It does not matter how many people we have infected, but how many people can come to work. Take the example of a small police station in southern Serbia, which has two infected people. Nothing terrible would be said. But there are 15 people in isolation and another 35 on sick leave of another kind – illustrates Ninić.
More than half of the staff at UP are not young, many of them are people with chronic diseases so they have a higher risk of complications in the case of kovid disease, and children, doctors say, can be asymptomatic carriers of infection. In addition, it must be taken into account that since May 11, when the kindergartens opened their doors after the state of emergency last spring, fewer children arrived at the kindergartens until September, and since October the attendance has been of almost 70 percent.
– This is an unseen average, and in practice it is obvious that some institutions are overbooked. It happens that, like the day before yesterday in a kindergarten in the capital, an educator works alone with 30 children in a nursery group, because the night before her colleague reported that the covid was positive. In such difficult conditions, it is not possible to work according to all the protective measures provided, and the decade-long problem we have with space and personnel has come to the fore. It is difficult to reach new educators. Finding a replacement for the support staff that makes up 30 percent of employees at each institution is a big problem, Ninić notes.
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