Barely weeks after the Medical and Dental Workers strike action was speedily reconciled with better conditions of service, teachers countrywide are mobilizing and threatening strike action if their package presented to government is not speedily considered. Medical workers downed tools for over one week and resumed duties after a medical package was made for them to meet the free health services to be launched by President Ernest Bai Koroma on April 27th Sierra Leone’s 49th Independence Anniversary Day.
Speaking at the launching of the Global Action Week at the Secretariat of the Education for All, Augustine Garvey Karim said much attention should be given to the teachers if education should thrive.
Mr. Karim said he was going right round the country mobilizing teachers in readiness for the package that has been presented to government on their behalf. He said the conditions of the teachers were not good and that since they negotiated with government in 2004 about their welfare, no other negotiation, unless now had taken place.
In Freetown, some teachers held a meeting at the Government Rokel Secondary School where they affirmed their readiness to go on strike if their package is not considered by the government.
This move by the teachers in comparison with the health workers have been described by some people as unrealistic as the medical package for the health workers was donor sponsored unlike what the teachers are asking which would be sponsored by the government.
By Ishmael Bayoh