Bamako, Jan 21, 2020 – Teachers in Mali declared a strike over a pay dispute Tuesday with the government threatening to break the protest by using thousands of already-jobless teachers. Eight teaching unions are demanding that the government honour a pledge made in January last year to raise public salaries by 20%, according to Adama Fomba, a union leader. That pledge also foresaw another 9-percent salary bump in 2021.
“We want our demands to be taken into account,” said Fomba, the secretary general of the Sypesco teachers’ union. He said that the strike would last until February 7. It is unclear how many teachers are striking, however, an official in Mali’s education ministry said teachers across the vast country had walked out on Tuesday.
The move follows the breakdown of talks between the government and teaching unions last week. “There was no reason for them to fail,” Malian Prime Minister Boubou Cisse said on Sunday, referring to the talks. He added that the government had accepted the demands, in principle. A large portion of Mali’s budget is dominated by the fight against insecurity.
Rebels captured the country’s north in 2012, triggering a jihadist conflict that has killed thousands and has since spread to the Mali’s centre, as well as neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger. Cisse said the government would “proceed with the exceptional recruitment of 15,000 teachers” who are trained but unemployed. “These are the ones that we will call up if the teachers don’t return to class in two weeks,” he said. In a joint statement, the unions said Cisse’s statement characterised “the contempt and hatred that the Prime Minister has always shown towards teachers”. Unions have called for a “national march” on Thursday.
By AFP
