ARGENTINA-EDUCATION: Teachers Unimpressed with Gov’t Proposal

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jul 29 1997 (IPS) - Argentina’s teachers, on their 130th day of a hunger strike Tuesday, said they would continue fasting in spite of an Education Ministry proposal for a one billion dollar tax-based fund for salaries and an increase in the 1998 education budget.

The general secretary of the teacher’s union, Marta Maffei, called Education Minister Susana Decibe’s proposal – put forth on Monday – “an important step.” But she expressed her concern that the initiative – the first since teachers began taking turns fasting in a tent in front of Congress – was merely an effort to reach a compromise solution before the October legislative elections.

She feared that after the elections, the proposal would not be enforced. “We will continue the hunger strike until we decide whether or not the initiative is sufficient,” said Maffei, adding that “in our Aug. 15 congress we may even decide that the present protest measures must be stepped up.”

Maffei said the teachers would not stop fasting without guarantees that Decibe’s present position had the backing of both the executive branch and Congress.

Decibe, meanwhile, urged the teachers to lift the hunger strike because “the country’s top educational authority is committed to this proposal, and President Carlos Menem has promised a solution.” While she admitted that there were differences within the cabinet – both Economy Minister Roque Fernandez and Interior Minister Carlos Corach are opposed to the initiative – she said Menem supported the proposal.

The first group of teachers went on strike on Apr. 2 to demand that the education sector receive six percent of the Gross Domestic Product as stipulated by Argentine law, rather than the present three percent, and to demand a living wage.

The teachers have also been pressing for the approval of one of the 14 draft laws on the educational budget shelved in Congress due to the refusal of the governing party’s majority to discuss them.

The fasters have the backing of 70 percent of the population, according to the latest opinion polls. The “teachers’ tent” has been visited by prominent artists, writers, journalists and diplomats, and unions and opposition parties have expressed their support for the teachers. Popular TV and radio programmes have broadcast from the tent.

In the past, teachers went on often long drawn-out strikes to demand wage raises. But that measure earned them criticism by parents due to lost schooldays. Today both parents and high schools students have offered to join the hunger strike.

Up to now, the Education Ministry had been at loggerheads with the teachers, and even transferred responsibility for salaries to the cash-strapped provincial governments. But on Monday, Minister Decibe admitted that authorities were studying the possible creation of a national fund out of which teachers’ salaries would be paid.

“A well-paid teacher is our basic tool for making transformations in the content and application of education possible,” said Decibe, acknowledging that the government had neglected teachers’ salaries.

Maffei, meanwhile, remarked that the president met twice over the past few days with footballers who recently went on strike, while he never once received the teachers since they began to fast.