The male and female models are usually paid by the hour and hired on an eight-month basis.
Until now, their selection was made by the art professors based on their own criteria and the needs of students in the various painting, sculpture and engraving classes. They were then hired by ministerial decree.
As a result of the economic crisis, their number was set to be reduced from 36 to 28 during the coming year but the recent complication of going via ASEP has delayed the process so much that the new academic year began without any models in the workshops at all.
"We submitted our request for the hiring of models to the education ministry last June. Unbelievable bureaucracy and delays are worse than the economic crisis. As a result the School's educational work will lag behind," said Fine Arts School director Rolanda Tziamalou.
"We cannot have everything that walks, swims or flies go through ASEP. There must be some exceptions to the law," she stressed, underlining that selection of the models should be the work of the artists and teachers.
At the school's request to speed things up, the process had been approved by ASEP, left the education ministry and had now 'snagged' at the interior ministry, Tziamalou said.
From January 1 of the new year and until the required stamps, signatures and remaining bureacratic procedures are completed, the art school will remain without any live models in any of its workshops, the models have suddenly been left without a job and the students will be left without their main 'material' for their studies.
ANA-MPA
