The Mayor’s Office has removed CEMO’s “bilingual school” signs donation

Tîrgu Mureș-Marosvásárhely, 21 July, 2015.℘

CEMO has offered to donate bilingual signs to all interested institutes of education. In June 2015, one local secondary school was interested, and our volunteers and activists have placed about one hundred bilingual signs within the premises of the three buildings that belong to the School Alexandru Ioan Cuza.

After finding out about our official donation, in July 2015, the deputy director of the Directorate for Investment and Reparation of Schools of the Mayor’s Office of Tîrgu Mureş (Marosvásárhely) threatened local school managements with fines if they “illegally” place signs donated by a “third party.” In his circular, deputy director stated that it is “prohibited by law” for schools to place signs of “external source.”

The circular stated that the aim of placing such bilingual signs was “to destabilize the harmony and mutual understanding between local citizens; between children in this case.” Furthermore, as a public servant, the deputy director falsely stated that Law of Local Public Administration No. 215/2001 is prohibiting bilingual signs. At the same time, the Directorate for Investment and Reparation of Schools admitted that they are the exclusive owners of the inner spaces of all institutes of education throughout the city. Consequently, CEMO considers that the Directorate for Investment and Reparation of Schools is responsible for breaking the law by the monolingual inscriptions in preschool and school premises.

Given the extremely abusive actions of the School Directorate of the Mayor’s Office our activists were obliged to remove the donated bilingual signs, at the request of the Deputy Director, who informed us to “take our signs and leave”.

Given the attitude of the School Directorate CEMO has decided to initiate a law suit against the representative of the Mayor’s office.