Opposition in Debrecen: students deserve more

György Pallás, the representative candidate of the Debrecen opposition alliance, and László Mándi, candidate for mayor, issued a statement.

György Pallás, representative candidate of the Union for Cívisváros Egyesület:

Here, at the corner of Bolyai Street, you can clearly see the traffic congestion that characterizes other parts of the city. However, the afternoon rush hour hasn’t started yet. In the morning and in the afternoon, you can really see that as a result of the disproportionate development, the residents of Debrecen spend a large proportion of their time in traffic jams.

The roundabout connecting the boulevard with the university was already found to be under-planned when it was handed over, with a much lower traffic volume than what actually happened. The situation is significantly aggravated by the fact that there is only one crosswalk available, through which university students can reach the university from the expensive dormitories and even more expensive apartments on foot, by bicycle or scooter from the city center. Chaos and danger to life prevail here during peak traffic, and there have been fatal accidents. Level crossings with bridges or underpasses should be abolished, but there is no plan for this in this year’s budget.

The Debrecen city assembly today accepted the report on the implementation of the 2023 budget decree and the amendment to the decree. However, the amendments still contain the disproportionalities that a transport next to the educationt too characterized by

Until the nationalization of the schools, Debrecen was proud of its high-quality education network and paid a lot of attention to the students. Today, the city’s education committee deals only with kindergartens. In the city budget of more than two hundred billion, there are items worth several tens of billions, but among them, education is included with orders of magnitude smaller amounts of a few tens of millions. The Bursa Hungarica scholarship program for further education is here, whose budget of ten million in previous years has been increased by a few million in this year’s budget. However, the expenditure on the Debrecen International School (ISD) scholarship is significantly higher. We don’t increase this, but decrease the former! Because while the ISD scholarship program applies to a single school, Bursa Hungarica does all high schools in the city and first-year university students touch! While the super-equipped International School can be used primarily by the wealthy, and the scholarship reduces the costs of the best students, the scholarship supporting further education can be applied for by talented but severely disadvantaged students. The criteria of need were established by the city with such income limits that only a few, 40-50 students each year, can take advantage of the scholarship. This is how it can happen that even the funds available in the budget cannot be fully used, and today, for example, the General Assembly returned and reassigned the remaining HUF 250,000 of the ten million budget. This disproportion and attitude is shameful! As the representative of the Union for Cívisvárosért Egyesület in municipal district 19, I can promise that we will change this approach according to our program!

László Mándi, the mayoral candidate of the Széfgags a Cívisvárosért Egyesület:

As is known, based on the decision of the city assembly, students under the age of 14 can use public transport for free. We supported this decision, but we consider it insufficient and should definitely be further developed. On the one hand, this involves significant administration, which makes it difficult to use (you have to register, apply for a city card, a school district summary is required, they are prepared based on an order, the school district delivers the cards to the schools where they can be collected). This needs to be simplified: we plan to extend the free service to all students participating in public education, as well as to students in full-time higher education institutions. In addition, we plan to provide everyone in Debrecen with the opportunity to purchase a discounted annual pass. This would not reach HUF 2,000 per month. Thereby the cost reduction for families in Debrecen in addition, by increasing the use of public transport, traffic congestion would also be further reduced.