Protesting teachers took to the streets across the country last week demanding better rights and payment of arrears.
Contract teachers in Guinea have taken to the streets threatening new strikes as they grow frustrated with payment arrears and lack of integration into the country’s public system.
Demonstrators protested in parts of the West African state from April 24 to 30, according to French news outlet RFI. Some teachers have reportedly been without pay for seven months and the strike comes a month before students are due to take their final exams.
Last week, the Ministry of Territorial Administration and the Ministry of Pre-University Education announced the payment of salaries, although no date has yet been set, RFI reported.
However, the ministries have said that teachers’ contracts must first be updated and fraudulent cases must be filtered out.
“It is the first time that the two departments are looking into the issue of contract teachers,” Alseny Mabinty Camara, the national coordinator for contract teachers, told RFI.
However, Camara remains skeptical.
“This minister has made many promises in the past that have never been fulfilled, so we remain dissatisfied and await how the contents of this press release will be implemented,” he said.
Questions loom over what will happen if the teachers’ threat to strike becomes real.
“Today the truth is that the proper organization of national exams is under threat in more ways than one. The day we decide to leave the classrooms completely, it will have a negative effect on the proper functioning of the national exams,” says Camara.
Teacher strikes are common in Guinea, with one episode resulting in a deadly confrontation with police in February 2017.
At the time, at least seven people died when police clashed with students demonstrating in support of striking teachers. Guinea’s main teachers’ unions had launched the strike to protest the government’s decision to fire or cut the salaries of many young teachers after civil service exams.