Buenos Aires. Students and teachers of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) protest with public classes in the street and symbolic hugs to buildings in repudiation of the drastic adjustment of the government, which could cause the closure of the institution in two or three months, its authorities warned on Thursday.
The ultra-liberal president Javier Milei did not update the university’s budget, which operates with 2023 funds at a time when the country suffers from 288 percent year-on-year inflation.
“If the situation does not change, in two or three months the UBA could close,” said Ricardo Gelpi, rector of the university, which is the most important in the country with more than 300,000 students, at a press conference this Thursday.
“We have never experienced this situation before in the last 40 years of democracy,” Gelpi said. “We have reached a point of extreme gravity, in which the future of hundreds of thousands of Argentinians is compromised,” he added.
The UBA, which declared itself in a “budgetary emergency”, restricted the use of electricity and gas and, since Wednesday, its classrooms and hallways have been in darkness, without air conditioning or heating and with its elevators reserved for people with disabilities.
Public universities across the country called for a national march on April 23, which is expected to be massive.
In recent weeks, open classes have been held on public roads and this Thursday hundreds of people gave a symbolic hug to Clínicas, one of the six hospitals dependent on the UBA, which, according to its director Marcelo Melo, works “to 30 or 40 percent of its capacity” due to lack of funds.
The presidential spokesperson, Manuel Adorni, assured this Wednesday that “the universities are not going to close” and that “a request for an increase in the budget item was presented on April 9 and was followed up.”
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– 2024-04-25 14:16:50
