📋 Tender Overview
President Alberto Fernandez stressed the importance of "being supportive so that everyone can access education" when inaugurating this morning, together with the governor of La Pampa, Sergio Ziliotto, the new building of classrooms and auditoriums of the National University of La Pampa (UNLPam), in the city of Santa Rosa, which required an investment of 591 million pesos and will benefit more than a thousand students.
"When I insist on the need to value public education, I do so because the future of Argentina is linked to the development of knowledge, and when they say 'let's end Conicet' they are saying that we end the development of science and technology," said the president and added: "That means that Argentina ceases to be one of the ten countries that can put satellites into orbit. lose INVAP with its development of nuclear reactors to generate energy or leave aside the possibility of having vaccines against COVID-19."
Accompanied by the Ministers of Public Works, Gabriel Katopodis; of Education, Jaime Perczyk, and the secretary of University Policies and rector in use of leave of the UNLPam, Oscar Alpa, the head of state warned that "when they are told that everyone can choose where to go (to study), there is a huge fiction behind it. Because this building that we inaugurate today is not a business, the State does it because it detects that there is an opportunity to educate Argentines who tomorrow will serve the country with their professional effort."
"As a community we have to be in solidarity so that everyone can access education," emphasized the President and remarked before the students present that "behind that message of freedom there is a huge trap, because the only caste that is being defended in that discourse is the caste of the powerful, of those who have resources and take away your freedom to study."
On the contrary, he pondered that from the national government "we made 167 interventions in public universities. We inaugurated works throughout the country without asking the political color of who governed so that teachers have good buildings to teach and students where to train." And he pointed out that "condemning a young person to uprooting for wanting to study is a canard, and that is why we have to bring the universities close to those who study so that they do not suffer it."
"We have 34 months of job creation registered when they left us 11 points of unemployment and had 46 months of falling employment," continued the head of state and concluded: "Every time I came to the province I did it to drive the development of La Pampa, as I did in all the provinces of the country with each governor. The best Argentina we create is that of public education. I ask you to please don't back down."
In his speech, Governor Ziliotto highlighted the federal character of the national government that "looked at public works by virtue of the need of the territory, beyond who governed each province", and explained that since December 2019 there was "an unprecedented public investment of a national government in La Pampa" to reach the "129 completed works, in execution or tendered, through an investment last July of 200,363 million pesos.
Minister Perczyk, for his part, stressed the need to "defend the presence of students in the university," and stressed that "the public university of Argentina is recognized in the world and in freedom 2 million students choose it, as well as professors and non-teachers choose to work in it, while graduates choose to stay doing academic life and give back to the university what it gave them. " During the event, the start of work on new audiovisual classrooms at the headquarters of the UNLPam in the city of General Pico was announced, which will require an investment of 132 million pesos.
At the end of the activity, the President went to the town of Casa de Piedra, to tour the provincial winery, an experimental farm and the property where a second water intake and a new irrigation system will be installed that will reach 1,500 hectares. Also present were the Secretary General of the Presidency, Julio Vitobello; the vice-rector of the UNLPam, María Ema Martin, and the local mayor, Luciano di Napoli.
