Incoming HR minister aims to achieve demographic goals by changing minds

Miklós Kasler, the incoming minister of human resources, told daily Magyar Idők on Tuesday that he is to step up material support and endeavour to change attitudes to family planning to tackle the country’s demographic problem.

“Continuing to support families, improving the quality of healthcare, continuing to promote a value-based education system, better grounding young people in love of country and strengthening a society based on work all serve to improve demographic indicators,” he said.

Kásler noted the discrepancy between the number of children young adults plan to have and the number they actually end up raising, saying that the reasons are partly material and partly of attitude.

“We aim to change both, because the value of family is one of the most important values,” he said.

The ministry is looking into setting up a deputy state secretariat to promote and boost Hungarian-language education for ethnic Hungarian communities in the Carpathian Basin, Kásler said.

The ministry is boosting national institutes within the health care system as the flagships of the fight against common diseases, he said. The institutes will also take a role in the theoretical background work of policy making and the coordination of services, he said.

Such institutes will be promoted in the fields of education and culture too, Kásler said.

By using their potentials better, the National Museum, the National Széchenyi Library and the National Theatre could become lead institutions, he said.

Source: MTI