In Brestovac, construction of a new kindergarten is in full swing, a project with a total value exceeding €2.5 million. Brestovac is the last municipality in Požega-Slavonia County without a preschool institution, so its opening will ensure that every local unit in the county finally has a kindergarten.
According to Zdravko Mandić, the municipality, the civil engineering works alone are worth €2.17 million, while an additional €400,000 is earmarked for equipping the building, for which a supplier was recently selected.
A significant portion of the funding comes from external sources: €760,000 from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, €800,000 from the Ministry of Science, and €60,000 from the Ministry of Regional Development and EU Funds for equipment. The remaining nearly €1 million will be covered by the Municipality of Brestovac from its own budget.
Parallel to the construction, the establishment of the kindergarten as an institution is underway. Mandić expects that everything could be ready by the end of the year, with children able to start attending immediately after the project's completion.
County prefect Antonija Jozić also visited the construction site. The kindergarten in Brestovac is the eleventh of 14 kindergartens in the county for which funding was approved through government programmes over the past five years. There remains the extension of the kindergarten on Rudinska Street in Požega, and work on new kindergartens in Trenkovo and another in Požega is expected to begin this year.
Despite the investments, the prefect warns that the problem of a shortage of places will not disappear overnight. "I fear that waiting lists will not disappear completely," Jozić said, noting that some areas still have waiting lists even after admissions have taken place, but expressing confidence that funding sources for new kindergartens will continue to be available in the future.
