School teachers begin two-day strike

Public school teachers in Mali began a two-day strike on Tuesday to press for better working conditions and higher salaries, paralysing the school system from nursery to university level, official of the teacher's union said. Teachers in higher institutions of learning, including Mali's sole university, joined the strike barely two months after staging a similar strike. That strike was called off after the government promised to review their terms of employment. "If our demands are not met, we reserve the right to extend our action," Youssouf Ganaba, the secretary-general of the Malian National Federation of Education, the largest teachers' union in the country, said. Thousands of school children in the capital, Bamako, and other towns in the hinterland, who have gone to school in the morning, trekked back home after the teachers failed to turn up to teach their classes. The teachers' union said it launched the strike to press the government of President Amadou Toumani Toure to improve their working conditions, pay salary bonuses and arrears, harmonize pay scales for all public service employees and integrate part-time teachers into the public service. The strike was called after negotiations between the education ministry and union representatives collapsed on Monday night at 2300 GMT, after failing to agree on the resolution of the teachers grievances, sources told IRIN The strike was the third in recent weeks, in which Malian government employees are demanding higher salaries and better working conditions. Before the teachers strike of 8 October, the national union of workers had organised a two-day strike to press Toure to keep his electoral promises and improve working conditions. The union, at the time, said the government had failed to improve workers conditions as promised during presidential elections in April 2002.