2023-08-19 01:02:42
A large group of researchers, scholarship holders, administrative staff and even retirees They closed ranks this Friday in Bariloche in defense of the Conicet. In addition, they rejected the proposal of the presidential candidate of the right-wing Libertad Avanza party, Javier Milei, who maintained that the Conicet “as it exists today must be closed” and questioned the productivity of the organization.
“There is not a country in the world where research is not supported by the State”, affirmed the director of the Technological Scientific Center (CCT), Celeste Ratto, which works in Bariloche.
This Friday followingnoon an assembly was held at the headquarters of the CCT in Bariloche, located at 2350 Avenida de los Pioneros, with a large audience.
There, they exchanged opinions and expressed proposals to deal with the possible closure of the institution in the event that Milei becomes President. There were several calls to be united to face policies that propose the decline of the national body. “They do not come just for us, they come for education and public health, for YPF and Aerolíneas Argentinas”, warned one of the people who took the floor.
Ratto maintained that the discussion happens por what it means for a country to close an institution like the Conicet. He said that the country allocates 0.3% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the development of science and research, while in other countries that “these candidates admire” they allocate between 1 and 3% of GDP.
“We are not an expense, we are an investment,” said Ratto. “If they pass us to the private sector, they close us down,” he assured.
Conicet has around 28,000 employees
Rodolfo Sánchez reported that the Conicet has regarding 11,800 researchers and a similar number of scholarship holders, regarding 3,000 technicians and regarding 1,500 administrative staff. There are 131 institutes in the country. “There are things that no private sector or the market would do, such as investigating Chagas disease or dengue,” he observed.
They recalled the development of vaccine or chinstrap research, at the time of the covid-19 pandemic. Or from a drought resistant seed.
Sánchez indicated that a Conicet scholarship recipient receives, in general terms, regarding 280,000 pesos a month in this region, but because he charges a cold zone. He said that the highest category of the researchers rank receives around 580 thousand pesos. “Milei wants to shrink the State at all costs, she is not interested in the independence of the country in what is science and public research”said Armando Aligia, from Conicet.
The assembly agreed that society must be informed of the projects that were promoted by the national body and that contributed in various areas. Some researchers and professors with several years in the body recalled past crises that the Conicet faced due to adjustment policies that were applied from the national governments.
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