Libya’s Salary Strike Mobilises Teachers Across the Split Nation
A salary protest by teachers in Libya has closed classrooms and delayed the start of the school year, uniting educators across the oil-rich but politically divided country. Their demands include increased salaries, health insurance, and overtime pay.
Classes for over 1.6 million public-school pupils were scheduled to begin in early September but have been postponed indefinitely, since teachers frequently take to the streets to protest unmet demands.”Libyan teachers are suffering,” Fatima Ali, a Tripoli teacher, told AFP.
The 37-year-old was protesting on Tuesday to “demand our rights” and for a wage increase “just like other public-sector employees whose salaries have been increased.” The so-called “teachers’ movement,” now endorsed by the Libya teachers’ union, staged a big protest outside the government headquarters in the capital Tripoli. Last week, it gathered thousands of demonstrators and threatened a national strike.
It is still divided between the UN-recognised government in Tripoli, led by Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah, and a parallel administration in the east, supported by military leader Khalifa Haftar. Since mid-September, thousands of teachers have protested on a regular basis, spreading the movement against “unfulfilled promises” from Tripoli to Benghazi in the east.
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