Federal University of Rio de Janeiro at Risk of Suspending Activities in August

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Rector of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Denise Pires de Carvalho, said on Monday, August 5th, that the institution is in danger of freezing some of its activities, such as surgeries at the university hospital, later this month.

Denise Pires de Carvalho explained that in July, the UFRJ was paid R$15 million (US$3.8 million) for funding expenses — discretionary expenditures — when the expected share was R$25 million — a 40 percent reduction.

The federal government had determined the budget reduction. On July 30th, the government published in a special edition of the Federal Gazette, the budget planning decree detailing the so-called contingency (retention) of more than R$1.44 billion in expenditures in the 2019 Budget. The ministries of Education and Citizenship were the most affected.

The Ministry of Education suffered retention of R$348.47 million, which corresponds to 24.1 percent of its budget.

This 40 percent cut also poses a risk to educational activities, according to the Dean of the UFRJ, since the security and cleaning services for campuses may be interrupted for lack of payment.

“Our situation is disastrous. These problems may start happening in August with the discontinuity of the cleaning and security contracts and, even more dramatically, the meals for university restaurants and also for our nine hospitals,” she said.

Denise expressed greater concern for the health sector: “Not only in the outpatient department, which is also affected by poor hygiene and safety, but also of in-hospital patients. Many daily surgeries may be discontinued if the meals need to be discontinued at our university,” she said.

On Friday, August 2nd, the rector had announced that she was attempting to call on MEC to find the R$10 million in funding for the university and prevent the institution from shutting down.