The Vice Minister for Parliamentary Affairs (VMAP), His Excellency Adérito Hugo da Costa, attended the plenary meeting of the National Parliament on January 20th, 2025. Several issues were discussed at the meeting, including the education sector in Timor-Leste, administrative evictions, and infrastructure, among others.
The agenda for this plenary session included information on the Public Finance Committee’s inspection report on the Municipalities of Baucau and Bobonaro, the Economy and Development Committee’s inspection report on the Municipality of Lautém, and the report on participation in the 149th Meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in Geneva. The agenda also included political statements from the parliamentary benches, various interventions by MPs, and an intervention by His Excellency the VMAP.
In the FRETILIN bench’s political statement, many issues were mentioned, including the general policy of improving education as a fundamental right of citizens, the problem of basic school infrastructure, the lack of teachers, the quality of school meals, which still has no practical solution, the rehabilitation of school buildings, the administrative evictions programme and its impact on the students affected by these evictions, and the plans to build new classrooms.
At the plenary session, the other opposition benches also continued to question the recruitment process for contract teachers, even though the Government, through the Ministry of Education, has already established a policy to give them special tests with reasonable and appropriate content.
On the other hand, the CNRT bench also presented a political declaration in response to administrative evictions raised in plenary. This political declaration states that administrative evictions are a way of protecting the population from risks or natural disasters, promoting safety concerning natural phenomena, establishing a green city, and improving the city of Dili in general, following the plan and programme of the 9th Constitutional Government, seeking to prevent the population from building in risk areas.
In his remarks, the Vice Minister for Parliamentary Affairs (VMAP), H.E. Adérito Hugo da Costa, said that the 9th Constitutional Government is committed to improving the quality of education and infrastructure, correcting the injustices committed by some people.
“The 9th Constitutional Government is committed to improving the quality of education, to raising the quality of education in Timor-Leste, by introducing measures that the 9th Government believes can resolve the issue of the quality of teachers and the quality of students, increasing classrooms, and improving new schools to reach the 67 posts that exist. As education problems will continue to be high in Timor-Leste, the Government takes responsibility for improving these gaps and is already solving the problems that occur in the education sector”, said H.E. VMAP.
In addition, H.E. VMAP added that the administrative evictions that the Government has carried out are taking place so that the communities don’t continue to live in risky places, namely on the banks of the rivers, and so that they don’t occupy public spaces, because currently, the 9th Government, through the Ministry of Justice, is trying to survey all the situations to address the problems of injustice that have been occurring, especially the bad practices that have allowed these plots of land to be rented out by private individuals for shops.
The President of Parliament, Fernanda Lay, chaired this plenary session, which was attended by the VMAP, Members of Parliament and other Members of Parliament.