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Cameroon: Varsity Lecturers Announce Another Strike Action
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The Post (Buea)
17 July 2008
Posted to the web 17 July 2008
Ernest Sumelong
The coming academic year will start with a strike action by lecturers of State Universities in Cameroon, the National Union of Teachers of Higher Education, with French acronym, SYNES, has announced.
The decision to go on strike was arrived at after a SYNES meeting on July 3 in Yaounde.
"The Minister of Higher Education will be served a strike notice with a view to calling for a strike at the start of the next academic year if by then the next stages of the triennial programme are not fully implemented," according to a SYNES communiqué.
"We have been treated with a lot of scorn. This time around the strike will work. We are not just throwing empty words," a University of Buea lecturer, who did not want to be named, said.
Yet, it is unlikely that the announcement would perturb both the university and Higher Education authorities since the lecturers have made futile attempts at organising a strike action. It is believed that if teachers of Higher Education lead a successful strike action, it will open the door for teachers of the Secondary and Basic Education to follow suit since they have made similar demands.
The lecturers are spoiling for a showdown against a backdrop of never-ending complaints about poor working conditions and low pay.According to SYNES, the National Executive Bureau carried out a thorough examination of the state of affairs in the universities with particular emphasis on the teachers' state of mind.
The teachers are vexed by the fact that government stopped the triennial programme (2001-2004) of the improvement of the working and living conditions of teachers in State universities after the implementation of its first phase in 2002. They also considered their relentless efforts at dialogue and attempts, since 1999, to call the government's attention to the fast deteriorating studying and teaching conditions.
SYNES also observed that the Head of State had given instructions that proposals concerning the next phases of the triennial programme be speedily submitted to him. This, they say, was revealed to teachers' delegates by the Minister of Higher Education at the end of a meeting on June 14, 2007.
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Besides, the lecturers are incensed by the fact that Higher Education teachers in other African countries earn salaries by far more than those of their Cameroonian colleagues.
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