Brussels, (Brussels Morning)- Flemish Member of Parliament Els Ampe (Open VLD) believes that teaching staff should be entitled to a mobility budget and cheaper parking tickets. According to BRUZZ, it would be part of the solution to the mobility problems that teachers in Brussels face on a daily basis.
According to the liberal politician from Laeken, ‘mobility annoyances’ often emerged from conversations with teachers about the teacher shortage. To gain a better insight into this, Ampe itself conducted a survey among Brussels teachers. A total of 501 teachers – the school staff of Dutch-speaking primary and secondary education in Brussels counted 7,219 members in 2020 – were willing to answer the six questions of the survey. Five percent of the respondents live in Brussels, 55 percent in the Flemish periphery. The rest of the respondents live further away.
“Almost forty percent of Brussels teachers take more than 45 minutes to get to school. That is equivalent to one and a half hours a day,” says Ampe about one of the results of her survey. “An hour and a half wasted time that they can’t put into their family or their own development, I think that’s a lot.”
Two questions related to parking close to work. “Half of them are having trouble finding a parking space near the school,” said Ampe. The other half answered ‘yes’ to the question ‘Can you easily find a parking space around your workplace?’ “55 percent of the respondents indicate that they have to pay for a parking space in the vicinity of the school, twenty percent place a parking disc,” says Ampe.
She also asked what teachers see as a solution for their ‘mobility annoyances’. A fuel card, mileage allowance, free parking or company car are popular suggestions. Just under half of the respondents see a solution in parking cards, almost a quarter argue in favour of a mobility budget.
Ampe: “This survey indicates that we need to improve the mobility of commuting teachers to keep them in Brussels. I share their view that a mobility budget and an affordable parking ticket in every municipality are part of the solution.”