MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chile to speed change

The government yesterday said it will quickly fulfill key promises to high-school students, a day after hundreds of youths clashed with police in a protest over perceived delays in educational reforms and improvements.

Education Minister Yasna Provoste said the government is moving forward with improving food service for poor students and providing discounts for public transportation.

The demonstrations on Tuesday were small and brief in comparison with protests in June that mobilized 700,000 students nationwide to demand changes to everything from bus fare to the country's dictatorship-era education law.

Those protests, lasting three weeks, ended after President Michelle Bachelet agreed to commit 200 million dollars to answer most of the demands, including school repairs, food aid for poor students and free college admission tests.

Authorities said 221 demonstrators were briefly detained Tuesday, but there were no reports of injuries during the protests in the Chilean capital of Santiago and in Copiapó, 800 kilometres to the north.

Provoste said that a decree could be issued as early as next week to give students cut-rate bus fares all day long rather than at limited hours. That was part of the agreement with the students to end the protests two months ago.

Provoste said that the government is already implementing another key agreement to extend and improve the quality of food service for poorer students. Some of Thursday's protesters complained that the food is still bad and insufficient.

The education minister said 200,000 students will be receiving improved meals by year's end, and 300,000 will be added next year.

The government also said 165,000 students finishing high school this year will be exempted from a fee for college admission tests.

Student activists also are seeking legal reforms that would restore responsibility over education to the central government.

Chile's education law, which dates from the 1973-90 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, transferred public education duties to municipalities, leading to inequities between poor and rich areas.

Bachelet has appointed a 72-member presidential advisory panel, which includes students' representatives, to make proposals for reform.

The panel is due to make its proposals in late September, and according to Provoste there is no delay in its work as the students claimed during Tuesday's protests.

??What our representatives in the panel are seeing is that the work is slow, and it will not be ready on time,'' José Valenzuela, a student leader said yesterday. ??There will be no concrete solution to what we asked in our demonstrations. We do not want just a deadline, but also proposals that can be achieved within that deadline.''