Photo: Screenshot from the CI video of the building of the new high school published on Facebook
Timcho Mucunski, the Mayor of Aerodrom Municipality in Skopje, in his campaign for the local elections last year said that a modern high school will be built in the municipality. To date, this promise is unfulfilled.
In the campaign, in a video titled “My Manifesto for Aerodrom in 90 seconds“, Mucunski said that a new high school will be built in the municipality. In addition, in a statement given to TV24, he said:
“Pity that the largest municipality does not have a single high school. By the end of the term, we will build a modern high school together with the City of Skopje”, said Mucunski on 9th February 2022.
On 12th October last year, Mayor Mucunski posted a visualization on Facebook of how the high school will look like and wrote:
Aerodrom will get a new high school by all European standards! We care for the future of our youth. As the largest municipality, we cannot afford to have poor quality education.
We queried the Municipality of Aerodrom, more precisely Mayor Mucunski on this topic. We did not receive answers to the question we sent, but in a telephone conversation, Mucunski clarified that it is a capital project that must be implemented together with the City Hall of Skopje, considering the fact that the founder of all secondary schools in the city is precisely the City Hall of Skopje, not the town halls of the municipalities.
“It is true that I made a promise that Aerodrom would get a high school, but according to my last contacts with Mayor Arsovska, the project is envisaged for implementation in 2023. It also true that no activities related to this project are taking place currently,” said Mucunski.
In addition, he could not specify the exact planned location of the high school, because, as he said, “there are two or three possible locations, but at the moment, the exact location has not been determined”.
Although Mucunski says that there are currently no activities related to this project, the City Hall of Skopje claimed otherwise for Meta.mk:
„In cooperation with the Municipality Aerodrom, there is an ongoing process of development of the project and the project documentation, which will be followed by its realization” was the reply we got.
The City Hall also explained that the strategic project for the construction of a new high school in the Municipality of Aerodrom was planned for the purpose of enabling spatial and modern conditions for the educational processes.
„Our goal is to improve the accessibility of good quality schools for students from all parts of the city and to improve the learning conditions. This new school will provide sufficient facilities according to the interest expressed and the needs of the residents in this part of Skopje,” replied the City Hall of Skopje for Meta.mk
Building a school is a capital investment that first needs a developed project, then a location must be determined, after which the contractor must be selected, and only then can the procedures for procuring school equipment start and, of course, that includes hiring teaching and administrative staff who will work in the high school.
This is not the first time that mayors have promised to build a high school in one of the largest municipalities in Skopje. In August last year, Truthmeter wrote that the former Mayor of Skopje, Petre Shilegov, and the Mayor of Municipality of Aerodrom, Zlatko Marin, made this promise in their local election campaigns in October 2017.
SOURCES:
1. „My Manifesto for Aerodrom“, YouTube channel of VMRO-DPMNE,
checked 20.10.2022
2. Statement for TV24, checked 20.10.2022
3. Fan page of Timco Mucunski on Facebook, checked 20.10.2022
4. Truthmeter, checked 20.10.2022
