Rabat – Morocco’s Coordination of Contractual Teachers has announced its plan to hold a new series of strikes across the country. The strikes seek to force the government to meet the educators’ “unanswered demands.”
The coordination said it will carry out sit-ins from February 9-12.
Abderrazak Drissi, Secretary General of the National Federation of Education (FNE), told Moroccan television channel 2M that the contractual teachers want the government to “take a political decision to respond positively to their demands.”
One of the demands is the integration of contractual teachers in the public sector.
The contractual teachers have been carrying out strikes and protests since 2019, calling for their integration in the public sector and an increase in their wages. Morocco began employing teachers under renewable contracts in 2016.
The FNE called on the Education Ministry to engage in “serious dialogue” with the teachers to find a solution to end their crisis.
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Demonstrations have not stopped despite the government’s decision to punish contractual teachers who took part in strikes by cutting their salaries.
Throughout 2019, contractual teachers organized a series of demonstrations. They mainly called for the abolition of fixed-term contracts and the end of the “discrimination” between contractual teachers and public sector teachers.
Moroccan authorities used water cannons to disperse the protests several times in 2019.
Protesters maintained their position, however . They appeared to grow especially determined to continue protesting after a failed “dialogue” with the education ministry.
In March 2019, Morocco’s Minister of Education Saaid Amzazi condemned the protests, saying contractual teachers knew they cannot join the public sector.
Amzazi said the government recruited teachers by contract with the aim of “improving the regional academies as public institutions with administrative and financial autonomy and controlling their human resources.”
It remains to be seen whether the new protests will succeed in convincing the government of the teachers’ demands.
