As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 28th of January, 2019, throughout the course of this year, Varaždin County will continue to invest heavily in education and healthcare thanks to European Union money, in addition, the county is going to busy launching some brand new, important projects.
This year, Varaždin County, the first in Croatia to do so, begins with the implementation of a very significantt project, financing school meals for secondary school students at risk of poverty. This is one of the newer and by far most important projects foreseen in the budget for 2019.
"We first introduced free [school] transportation and textbooks, and we're also starting to finance meals for high school students who are at risk of poverty. As many as 30 percent of primary school students are at risk of poverty, and we've provided free meals for all of them.
Since everyone is continuing to study, this problem isn't just going to disappear, and it's also necessary to finance meals for the most vulnerable kids in secondary schools,'' said county prefect Radimir Čačić. In the budget for 2019, 3.45 million kuna is planned to go towards pupil nutrition. The continued implementation of another new project is still going on, which is student accommodation, for which 526,000 kuna was provided, almost twice as much as 2018.
Investments in the construction and in several cases reconstruction of as many as twenty different schools is anticipated.
"In 2019, 227 million kuna will be invested in school facilities, and health and social care facilities. The increase is best seen in the consolidated budget, which amounts to 1.2 billion kuna, representing 25 percent more than last year,'' added Varaždin County Prefect Čačić.
In other areas, an innovative incentive scheme for farmers through the use of EU funds is of particularly interest. Thanks to this, the number of farmers who secured their crops and livestock has increased from 5 back in 2017 to a very encouraging 357 in 2018, and this year, further increases in the number of beneficiaries is expected.
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