March 1, 2021

march 1, 2021 Parliament debates 2021 budget bill./ Gaudeamus Book Fair organised by Radio Romania under way at gaudeamus.ro.

Budget. Parliament is today debating this year's state budget and social security budget bills proposed by the government, with the final vote expected to take place tomorrow. The bills were approved by the specialist committees without any of the 4,000 amendments filed by the opposition, which accuses the government of pushing for an austerity budget. The government instead describes it as fostering development and reform. Finance minister Alexandru Nazare says the state budget is aimed at economic recovery and does not contain tax rises or salary cuts.


Vaccination. A further 130  vaccination hubs will be opening from 1st March in Romania, where over 915,000 people have received the Covid vaccine using mostly the Pfizer-BioNTech jab. The Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines are also available in Romania. 214,000 Pfizer-BioNTech doses are delivered to Romania today. The coordinator of the mass immunisation campaign dr. Valeriu Gheorghiţă said the general population will be able to make vaccination appointments on the digital platform from the middle of the month, with actual vaccination as part of phase three due to kick off in April. On the other hand, specialists are warning that Romania is on the verge of the third wave of the Covid pandemic and are calling on the population to comply with the restrictions in place and continue to observe the three basic rules: wear facemasks, wash hands and maintain physical distance. Romania has seen over 804,000 coronavirus cases to date and over 20,400 deaths, with 2,096 new cases and 53 deaths recorded on Monday. Some 1,000 Covid patients are in intensive care.


Travel. Italy is today enforcing a number of regional restrictions to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Lombardy, Marche and Piedmont will now be in the amber zone, and the Basilicata and Molise, which are in the red zone, will be in effect cut off from the rest of the country. According to Radio Romania's correspondent in Italy, the island of Sardinia is the only region with a low number of infections. The Italian government is preparing to announce a set of measures for a whole month, including the Easter holidays. Germany is restricting travel on the border with France after a French border region was declared a high-risk area for the spread of Covid. France managed to negotiate however more relaxed measures compared with those imposed by Germany on its Czech and Austrian borders. According to worldometers.info, there are over 114 million global coronavirus cases, while the death toll surpassed 2.5 million.


Protests. Romanian healthcare workers are again staging protests today and tomorrow in Bucharest during the debates on this year's budget in Parliament. Their aim is to convince MPs to pass the changes proposed by trade unions, namely more money for healthcare and pay rises for healthcare workers. Protesters are also demanding  measures that have to do with staff safety, including the provision of protective equipment and material and human resources, in order to reduce the number of new Covid cases and fatalities among healthcare workers.


Car production. Renault's Dacia factories in Mioveni, in southern Romania, will suspend production for five days this month and most probably in April again, amid the ongoing global shortage of computer chips for cars. Only the departments making gear boxes and engines for other Renault models will remain in operation.


Book fair. The Gaudeamus Book Fair organised by Radio Romania gets under way today. Held entirely online at gaudeamus.ro, the fair will last for a whole month. It brings together over 70 Romanian publishing houses and dozens of events and book launches. The themes of the fair this year are non-fiction books, poetry and children's books. The lineup of the first day of the festival features an interview with the American writer Ali Standish, the author of the young adult book "The Ethan I Was Before". (CM)



www.rri.ro
Publicat: 2021-03-01 13:55:00
Vizualizari: 899
TiparesteTipareste