The 2023/2024 school year had started well and many teachers had gone to their place of duty. The students were taking classes decently and suddenly, disaster!!!! The strike was launched.
Teachers continue to feel bad, as evidenced by the repeated strikes, which are disrupting the start of the school year again this year. From north to south, and from east to west, the collective: “On a Trop Supporté (OTS)” which had already stood out in February 2022, has done it again!!! Teachers, once again this year, are replanting the strike picket. Among other things, they demand :
- reminders of advancement, reclassification and family allowances:
- the payment of the debt partly due to the non-payment of all salaries, as well as various teaching bonuses. According to the teaching unions, the total remaining amount to be paid
by the State would amount to 181 billion CFA francs;
-the signing of the “special status of the teacher”, in order to shed harsh light on the career profile, which remains to this day, subject to the vagaries of moods and the economic situation, under cover of the goodwill of the hierarchy of the establishment of the ministerial departments concerned, with all that this entails of corruption, cronyism and privileges.
-the holding of a National Education Forum, to discuss all the issues that undermine several levels of education in the country and seek effective ways and means likely to address them.
Until the strike began at the start of this school year, everything suggested that we had escaped the trap of dead ends. The public authorities seemed to confirm such a version. On September 28 in Yaoundé, the Government organized a media show. No less than 6 (six) ministers are present. The press conference is led by the Minister of Communication, Government Spokesperson.
During this, the Minister of Public Service and Administrative Reform (MINFOPRA), affirms that thanks to a system of simplification and dematerialization of procedures, the integration of teachers, which previously took years, is being done. now no later than 90 days. As a result of such a measure, he asserts, among other things, that the speed of such a procedure had enabled the processing of 3,177 successful integration files, out of 3,812. These files come from the 2022 class, from the Schools Normales Supérieures (ENS) and Ecoles Normales Supérieures de l’Enseignement Technique (ENSET). The Minister also stated that 3,702 of these winners already had a registration number and that 3,177 of them are already integrated. The government member also mentioned the organization in 2022 of a rapid results initiative, which allowed the processing of 16,168 files within 30 days. Still regarding the good results achieved, MINFOPRA notes that 11,515 integration orders for contract teachers were signed between March and September 2023.
The Minister of Finance (MINEFI), for his part, during the same press conference, indicated that since March 2022, the system of payment of salaries in proportion to 2/3 of various allowances from which employees should benefit teachers, no longer exists. He also specifies that all salaries are now paid in full, including housing
allowances. MINEFI also affirmed that since May 2022, housing allowance reminders have also been fully paid. In the same vein, he affirms that these allowances, estimated at 54.5 billion for secondary teachers, were cleared at the rate of 3.5 billion per month. It also notes that the payment of State arrears under this heading was completed in August 2023. If the State was able to provide so many means and resources to satisfy teachers, why does the strike continue? Was the press conference held by members of the government on September 28 only intended to set up a communications operation with a view to nipping the strike that was being prepared in the bud? Was it a poker-liar operation? We are tempted to answer in the affirmative, as it is true that the strike continues to this day, and sometimes takes on more radical aspects in certain public education colleges and in certain regions of the country.
THE IMPOTENCE OF PUBLIC POWERS IN THE FACE OF THE METHODS USED
Faced with the teachers' walkout currently underway, the repressive system and the means of coercion usually used by the public authorities to quell strikes now appear obsolete. Usually, the public authorities are recognized for their jubilant access to the destruction and other attacks on the physical integrity of the demonstrators, who happen to be its own citizens. Here, there are no more ways of harming anyone's physical integrity, since the strike is essentially peaceful and carefully avoids the streets. It takes place within educational establishments. Moreover, the strikers are not content to stay at home. If this were the case, the pretext of absence from work then risks putting them before the disciplinary council, a procedure contained in the regulatory texts governing the Civil Service. Faced with such a constraint, teachers report to their workstation and register on the attendance sheets sometimes put in place by school principals for enrollment control. Then, they will camp in the teachers' room, when such a provision is offered to them. Crossing their arms, they can then calmly discuss the expectations of the strike, plan it and manage it.
Furthermore, the strikers communicate their wishes via the press, banners, social networks and other posters, which they then brandish within or at the entrance to educational establishments..
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