Teachers extend their strike

Primary and secondary school teachers in the Central African Republic (CAR) have decided to indefinitely extend their strike for the immediate payment of their salary arrears. "Eighty percent of the teachers are observing the strike," Malachie Mbokane, the chairman of the Interfederale des enseignants de Centrafrique, a umbrella confederation of five teachers' trade unions, told IRIN on Tuesday. The confederation claims to have 8,000 members among the CAR's 10,000 teachers. The teachers who are union members have been on strike since September 2002 when they demanded that the government settle salary arrears of at least nine of the 32 months owed them and other civil servants. Some teachers received a month's salary in January. A primary school teacher earns 80,000 CFA francs (US $107) and a secondary school teacher 100,000 CFA francs. To lessen the impact of the strike, the government has recruited new teachers to replace the strikers, but failed pay a month's salary in October and two months' in November as promised. The government has been fighting rebels trying to overthrow it. "The government told us that the priority was accorded to the soldiers," said Mbokane, who added that the leaders of teachers' organisations feared for their lives. Despite the strike affecting government schools, pupils have continued to attend classes, thereby inspiring officials with the hope that this school year will not be annulled "Only 10 percent of the teachers are on strike, and this does not affect the school," Philomene Ndounda, the principal of Bangui's Lycee des Martyrs, told IRIN on Tuesday. However, schools in areas under rebel control have been closed since October 2002, because teachers have fled.