By Safaa Kasraoui
By Safaa Kasraoui
Rabat – A hunger strike is being carried out by trainee teachers starting Tuesday, in protest of what they call their deprivation from teaching positions despite passing recruitment tests.
Strikers are calling on the government to engage in dialogue with them in order to find equitable solutions to their demands.
During a press conference held on Tuesday at the the headquarters of the Moroccan Labor Union in Rabat, the National Trainee Teachers Coordination, which consists of 150 teachers, decided to resort to the hunger strike.
In 2016, the government had launched a teaching training program, which included more than ten thousand people with different academic degrees.
Some of these trainee teachers managed to pass the test while 150 discovered that they failed.
In response, the Coordination disputed the results, accusing the ministry of deliberately failing them in an act of retaliation against the trainee teachers after a year of struggle and protest.
Abderrazaq Bazar, a Masters degree holder and member of the teachers Coordination told Morocco World News that they decided to go on hunger strike as a reaction to the government’s continuous refusal to meet their demands, choosing instead to deal with their problem through strikes and marches.
The teachers association is now demanding the government to give them the right to access their exams results, adding that they have already been told that they pass the recruitment exams by the test committee.
He added that the decision was also taken after 70 days of strikes and marches.
”We have received nothing but repression, scolding and ignorance from the government. This is what made us choose the escalation process” explained Bazar.
”They will continue their hunger [strike] plan and that they are determined to go for this strike even if it will lead to their ‘martyrdom’.”
