By Ali Idrissou-Toure
COTONOU, Nov 3 1999 (IPS)

The Beninois government is facing social unrest as parliament begins to debate the 2000 budget.

According to an official statement, Benin’s provisional budget of 627.1 billion CFA francs, leaves “a 124.5-billion-CFA-franc deficit which will be covered by foreign aid”.

One US Dollar is equal to about 600 CFA francs.

The statement, made available to IPS this week, specifies the economic and financial constraints under which the government should operate. “The budget for the fiscal year 2000 is compatible with the macro-economic goals set by the Third Structural Adjustment Programme (PAS III),” it says.

But enraged labour groups, whose membership is estimated 32,000- strong, mainly civil servants, have already embarked on a series of strikes. They say they have had enough since the structural adjustment programme (SAP), which has affected workers’ living standards, was introduced in the impoverished West African nation ten years ago.

The unions are particularly enraged by the government’s decision to freeze contractual pay increases since 1994.

The government has offered to pay the 1994 raise only if the unions agree to a merit pay scheme. The law, relating to the controversial scheme, adopted by the National Assembly last year, is being contested by the unions.

The unions have refused to discuss the scheme with the government. The government claims the scheme has been imposed by the international funding organisations to save money to bridge Benin’s budget gap.

According to the Minister of Civil Service, Ousmane Batoko, the government has no money to pay benefits to public employees. The 1994 raise, for example, Batoko says, will cost the government “6 billion CFA francs”.

The government has, however, conceded to the other benefit — 2.5 billion CFA francs — for teachers, the police and health care workers.

“These benefits translate to an increase of about 11 percent in total wages, from 69.5 billion in 1999 to 77.2 billion in the year 2000”, the statement says.

The five main civil service labour confederations began a 72- hour strike on Monday.

While negotiations continue with the labour confederations, two customs unions, met last week in the capital Cotonou, and threatened to stage a three-day solidarity strike with the other workers, starting Nov 2.

The customs unions also have announced their decision to observe a second 72-hour strike starting Nov 8 to protest the deployment of untrained personnel in the collection of duties, which they say has resulted in a drop in revenues.

The customs unions are also demanding that a presidential decree which created an ad hoc commission to investigate rumours of a smuggling ring among customs agents and in the port of Cotonou be annulled.

The commission, the unions claim, has caused a drop in receipts, estimated at 2 billion CFA francs in September alone. Customs officials are upset.

At the university of Benin, an entire level of teaching staff on strike for several days successfully barred the release of second session examination results. The teachers are demanding that they be reclassified as assistant professors, after having gone through a probationary period in the early 1990s.

As 1999 comes to a close, Benin appears to be caught in a spiral of strikes for higher pay, while debate on the 2000 budget has barely begun in the National Assembly.

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