Armies of Liberation

Almotamar.net – The Union of teachers and assistant teachers at the University of Sana’a, the Union’s Administration Body and all teachers of the university to stage a partial strike beginning of next Saturday to be followed by an all-out strike to be announced on Saturday 19 May.

A statement of the Union, almotamar.net received a copy of it, said the teaching staff members have found themselves forced to resort to a legitimate and legal way that they tried to avoid, i.e. the strike, for the achievement of all the just demands and legitimate rights of the teaching staff at the university.

The union ascribed its call for strike to not beginning in carrying out the executive procedures of the president of the republic election platform with regard to universities in hindering the president’s directives concerning residential plots of land for university teachers in addition to not implementing the university decision of distributing the plots of land among the teachers of the university.

The other cause mentioned in the statement regarding the strike is that of not spending the allowance of the nature of work to be added to wages scale and annual increments that was done previously.

Among other causes of the strike the union statement mentioned is non-implementation of agreements reached with the university presidency regarding the solution of retirement, death and promotions. The other cause is related to non-providing comprehensive health insurance that guarantees offering suitable health service to teachers, in addition to other demands.

The union said in its statement that suspending of lifting the strike is connected to meeting all the demands and implementation of all agreements, calling on Sana’a University Administration and concerned government sides to speed up meeting their demands and legitimate rights.

The union also expressed preparedness to make up the students for the period of strike.

Almotamar.net tried to contact officials at the Sana’a University and president of the university to comment on the teachers demands but failed to obtain any clarification or reply as the university officials declined to answer almotamar.net repeated phone calls.

Half of Yemeni children under 5 are malnourished. This is the statistic I hate the most. There’s ten million kids in Yemen.

Top officials hold multiple paid positions. Ghost workers drain the budget, and the Civil Service Ministry is fighting hard to reform the system.

Prison conditions are appalling.

The sons of a military commander (who murdered someone who told them to stop harassing girls) got arrested only after public protests. (They may never come to trial though.)

A 5000 year old settlement was discovered dating back top the Kingdom of Sheba.

Security arrested a (Zaidi) Shiite preacher, this is going on all over the country. And to no one’s surprise, the vacancies are filled by Salafi preachers. Also arbitrarily arrested, numerous political activists (both Socialists and Zaidis), journalists and anyone else who objects to the government’s tactics in fighting the war in Saada.

School is closed for three months.

LAHJ

- Teachers cease work over explosion

March 13 — Teachers have refrained from working at Al-Abous district’s Talb School for three months and classrooms remain closed because an identified group detonated a package of explosives in the school, damaging it and intimidating its students, who number as many as 550.

After the incident, parents urged concerned authorities to punish the perpetrators and prevent any armed protests at the school. Lahj Governor Abdulwahab Al-Durrah, directed the chief of the security department to take whatever measures necessary for teachers to resume working, but such hasn’t occurred.

This is actually very good. I hope the Civil Service ministery sticks to his demands. And that the doctors realize they need to pressure the Health Ministry in order to achieve their raises. This is how reform is going to happen if it happens.

YO: Doctors from six medical syndicates are threatening to go on strike beginning March 24 if their salaries are not increased. The doctors have adorned themselves with red badges to announce their protest. The six syndicates have accused Minister of Civil Service Hamoud al-Sofi of blocking their salary increases. Al-Sofi rejected the accusations of the medical syndicates.

Physicians want to receive special additional pay because the nature of their work is so difficult, and because they deal with cases of life and death. The minister says that the matter is not a problem between him and the doctors, but between the doctors and the law. The minister said that the doctors cannot get a raise in pay until the pending slate of reforms are adopted by the Ministry of Health. These reforms are demanded by the international community.

The Ministry of Health said that it instituted the reforms already, but an investigation by the civil service found that the doctors’ payroll list included names of dead people, retired people, and employees that are working in other countries. The law prohibits doctors from working for private and public hospitals at the same time. But all the doctors working in the private sector are the same ones working in the government hospitals, said al-Sofi.

The demands made by the medical syndicate are legal, said al-Sofi, but should go through proper procedures. If the doctors want rights, he said, the must also live up to their duties and obligations and not work two jobs. There are a number of irregularities that the health sector suffers from, said al-Sofi. The Ministry of Civil Service has submitted to the Ministry of Health a matrix of structural and organizing reforms to be implemented so as to reform the irregularities in the health sector.

“The Ministry of Health has pledged to implement these reforms, but none of these reforms have been done yet,” said al-Sofi. Among the most significant irregularities, he said, is the list of the salaries of the actual employees that includes names of dead persons and the retirees. Other irregularities include the misdistribution of the labor force, as some hospitals are suffering from a surplus of doctors, while other hospitals are empty, and there is not even one person who can present the essential services in these hospitals.

He added that the reform process at the Ministry of Health is going on very slowly. The ministry had claimed it implemented the reforms, he said, closer examination revealed that nothing had been implemented. “We will approve the salaries increase, this ‘special work allowance,’ once the reforms are done,” said al-Sofi. “Hence, we will go to their offices to give them the work allowance or the salaries increase.” In other news, doctors and nurses complain that they are not receiving half the salary that foreign health workers receive, which they were promised by Prime Minister Abdul-Qadir ba Jammal.

Al-Sofi complains that the prime minister promised to replace the foreign workers with Yemeni workers and this has not happened. Meanwhile, doctors and workers in the health sector have been tying red badges on their arms and threatening to start a partial strike that will be graded to full strike gradually starting from March 24. Dr. Mohammed al-Thawr, one of the leaders of the strike, said that the minister of civil service was the main obstacle to implementing the agreement to increase the doctors’ salaries.

Additionally, he said that this time the doctors will not suspend their strike until their demands are responded to fully. “We hope the government will not oblige us to reach the full strike, because this will harm the reputation of the government, the reputation of the health employees and will harm the citizens as well,” said Dr. al-Thawr.

The six medical syndicates that agreed on the strike were: the doctors syndicate, the doctors and pharmacists syndicate, the dentists syndicate, the physicians syndicate and the syndicate of the parallel medical professions. The number of the workers in the health sector across Yemen exceeds 35,000 workers.

Keep in mind, many teachers in opposition parties were transfered to distant posts after the election as retribution. Some refused to go. On the other hand, control of the pay to make sure it goes directly to the teachers is a good thing. There’s several good mechanisms here.

YO:

The educational bureau of the capital secretariat sacked 412 teachers this week, said Mohammed Abdullah al-Fadhli, the bureau’s general director. The teachers were discharged after it was proved that they had not been working for almost six months, which is the period required for legally sacking an employee for absenteeism.

This action came as part of the agenda of reform adopted by the Ministry of Civil Service and the Ministry of Education to end the practice of some workers illegally holding two government jobs, and the existence of phantom employees. Al-Fadhly said that his office sacked 361 teachers in December 2006 and 51 others this past January. Furthermore, the educational bureau has adopted a new strategy for paying its employees salaries. From the beginning of January 2007, all the employees of the educational bureau of the capital secretariat and all governmental schools in the capital began receiving their salaries from the CAC Bank after opening credit accounts there for each employee.

“This step will help to verify that the salaries are going to actual employees and not ‘ghost employees’ or other corrupt individuals,” said al-Fadhly. This step also encourages teachers to save money, and helps to ensure that they receive their salaries on time. Once the capital secretariat had adopted these reforms, the Ministry of the Civil Service decided to finally implement the teachers’ pay increase that was promised by the government last September. The pay increase was made effective in September 2006, but the actual dispersal of funds has been delayed.

The Ministry of the Civil Service stipulated that no governorate in the country would receive funding for the teachers’ pay increase until they had adopted and enacted the reform agenda, which included fingerprinting all current employees and getting rid of all dual jobs and sacking all non-working employees. Al-Fadhly, who considers himself “a reformist,” is proud that his educational bureau was the first to implement the reform agenda. As a result, twelve thousand teachers in Sana’a will receive their pay increases this month, at an estimated value of YR 500 million.

However, the teachers union has rejected the salary increase as insufficient, and far below the amount demanded by the union. The teachers union is one of three unions that represent teachers. The teachers union that is affiliated with the Islah party has rejected the current pay increase and is demanding a 200 percent increase in pay. The largest union—the Union of Educational Professions—had called for a strike at the beginning of February, after the salaries for the month of January were released without including the pay increase that both it and the government had agreed to this past September.

The strike was suspended when the Ministry of the Civil Service explained that no state institution would receive the pay increase until it had complied with the stipulations of the reform agenda, which the ministry distributed to all concerned bodies.

IMHO All the unions should form a national union of workers. That would have a little more impact.

Al-Motamar:

Four medical and pharmacist unions announced Sunday the establishment of a higher coordination committee and supervising committees in an effort to unify the medical and pharmacist cultural and trade unionist action through direct and free elections and to embark on having a unified union for physicians and pharmacists and another union for dentists, on the way for the establishment of a federation for medical professions.

A statement containing a code of ethics issued by the four medical unions affirmed the necessity of uniting the trade unionist work along with keeping the existing unions forms for each profession until holding the general conference. The statement also indicated the unification of efforts of all those unions in medical issues such as the demand for improving the circumstances of the profession regarding the nature of work and expensiveness as well as other rights and the joint coordination.

The statement the almotamar.net received a copy announced that those steps were out of their realization of the situation experienced by the medical profession with all its branches and out of their feeling of the responsibility. Thus the leaders of the trade unionist action of the physician and pharmacist and dentists unions viewed it is necessary to unify their efforts because the responsibility of those unions is a common one.

These grievances go back to July of 2005 when the fuel subsidies were lifted and a new Wages and Salaries strategy enacted but never implemented.

Teachers are facing similar and worse problems: many have been transferred from their jobs to distant locations in retribution for the teachers strike in March and for participating in the electoral process as opposition activists. Those who refused to go are being threatened with termination, and salaries are being withheld. Considering the state apparatus is at the disposal of the ruling party, politicized employment is one means of repressing democratic progress.

NY

Doctors and Pharmacists are going to make a sit-in before the premises of the Ministers Council next Tuesday to protest the government’s delay to tackle their financial status, accusing the government of attempting to “take away their rights”.
They called upon president Saleh to implement his election program and fulfill his promises to improve the living and scientific standards of workers in health sector.
The syndicate decided to make such a protest because the second year since the Salary and Wages Law was issued is approaching the end while the government did not fulfill its promises it gave for doctors yet, said vice chairman of Doctors and Pharmacists Syndicate, Mohammad al-Wafi.
The syndicate said in a statement that the sit-in would be achieved under the slogan “Protecting our Rights is Respect to our Identity”. It said that doctors and pharmacists rights are confiscated and they should not keep voiceless.
“The government used to mock doctors profession and their rights so it refuses every time to implement laws and decisions related to doctors and pharmacists. We have sent hundreds of letters to the government to improve our conditions like judges and others, but in vain”, said the statement.
The government moves over law, over rights of people and over all values and standards, said the statement.

Update: Here’s more on 400 teachers whose salaries were suspended from al Motamar:

SANA’A- Local sources at Shara’ab district, Taiz governorate, said heads of education centers suspended the November month’s salaries of 400 teachers that amounted to 10 million riyals. Sources told almotamar.net that the education center has granted more than 400 teachers arbitrary dispatching decisions since the beginning of this year in return for illegal payments.
According to the sources, the education center appointed principals without referring them to the Education Office in the governorate, the procedures of which are arbitrary. The educational process in the district is subjected to trafficking, sources added.
The sources further noted a number of schools lack textbooks since the beginning of the academic year. A number of inspectors in the district appealed to the local councils to quickly interfere and release their salaries as well as investigate into the case.

Yet more YT: Teachers threaten to renew strike: (Read on …)

NY: The Ministry of Education denied Monday any intention to close the Holy Quran teaching schools that it runs.
The Holy Quran teaching schools have been established by a presidential resolution and they have their own bylaw and structure, manager of the General Department of the Holy Quran Schools in the Ministry, Mohammad al-Ghaili told NewsYemen.
NewsYemen got a copy of an official order, attributed to the Ministry of Education and Education Office in a governorate, obligating the government primary and secondary schools to teach the Holy Quran as a separate subject inside schools but not outside.
The al-Ghaili denied such an order and said “it is baseless and has not any legal reference”.
Asked about complaints offered by some teachers of the Holy Quran about moving them to other schools and closing the Holy Quran schools where they used to teach, al-Ghaili said that such practices were personal and “have not a legal base”, confirming that the ministry is looking into the teachers’ complaints.
Abdul-Rahman Saad, head of the Legal Affairs Department in the ministry, said that closing the Holy Quran schools is illegal and “who does so has not legal base”.
NewsYemen has received complaints for Holy Quran teachers in Hajah over closing the Holy Quran schools there and confiscating their salaries.
The head of Education Office in Hajah refused to comment on the complaints and the legality of such procedures.
The legal affairs manager Ahmad Hadi asked the head of the Education Center, Yahya al-Sobaihi, in Haja to release the salaries of teachers, but al-Sobaihi said that he ordered not to release the salaries until teachers agree to move to other schools, pointing that the closure of the Holy Quran schools based on an order by the ministry to all schools to teach the Holy Quran as a separate material inside the formal schools, not outside them.
The Ministry of Education started observing the Holy Quran Schools after merging the scientific institutes with the government schools in 2000.

Opposition party teachers transfered to distant posts. AS:

Teachers-at Aflah Alyemen district (Hajjah province ) – belong to joint meeting parties JMPs , complain of despotic and illegal procedures authorities in Hajjah exercised against them.25 teachers confirmed – at complaint a copy of which Sahwa net received-that education administration in the district distributed them to far schools instead of schools they work in since beginning of current year as them being JMPs activists .

They demand manager of education office in the governorate to stop as such measures that insult the teachers rights.