Senior high school students are back to school today after classes were on halt for over three months due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Most students have been on vacation since the fourth week of January as part of the Chinese New Year holidays, when the outbreak also began in Macau. To prepare for school resumption, the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau (DSEJ) has performed nucleic acid screening tests for Covid-19 on all teachers, school staff, and cross-border students. According to the DSEJ plan, junior secondary school students will return next Monday, a week after senior secondary school students resume classes. The first two phases of school resumption concern about 27,000 students.
Continuing education subsidy scam unearthed
Macau’s anti-graft watchdog has detected a subsidy scam involving the Continuing Education Development Plan, according to a statement issued by the government. The scam involves almost 200 residents who allegedly defrauded subsidies from the plan. The education center involved offered cash kickbacks to the people who applied for the courses it launched. As a result, it successfully obtained the relevant subsidies granted by the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau (DSEJ) worth over 1 million patacas in total. According to the Commission Against Corruption investigation, most of the residents did not attend the courses claimed by the education center. Instead, they simply provided their personal data and received a cash kickback of up to 2,500 patacas. Then, the three education center operators applied for the subsidies from the DSEJ by submitting false information relating to application and attendance. The case has already been referred to the Public Prosecutions Office.
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