The school corridors were empty and quiet yesterday morning in Canton Sarajevo (CS). This is one of the three days of a warning strike by employees in primary and preschool education. The goal is a better status of educators, all teachers, and better education.
“I’m disappointed, we’ve never had more work and less contact with students. We see the students every day, but the administration we have to deal with got out of hand,” said Sasa Knezevic, a Bosnian language teacher at Grbavica 2 elementary school who has been teaching for 25 years.
Grbavica 2 is one of 79 primary schools in CS where staff, parents and children try to comply with the two-hour warning strike.
“If it continues at this pace, there will simply be no one to work with the children, no one to teach the children. Our working life is too long anyway. Our employee benefit has been abolished and unfortunately I have to say that most colleagues who retire do not live to see that retirement for long. We simply experience burnout. ” Sasa added.
“We will say that the current salary is 1,570 BAM (805 euros), that the maid and waitress will have 99 BAM (50 euros) less this month, that the driver, janitor, and fireman will only have an increase of 1 BAM and finally, gentlemen in power, everyone is leaving this country, even the bear from the forest wants to go to Germany,” said Saudin Sivro, from the Independent Union of Primary Education CS.
The relevant ministries say that at the end of last year the salary was increased by 5%, and that in the past 3 years, 15 million BAM (7.5 million euros) were invested in educational institutions.
The union states that this is not just a fight for higher wages.
“We don’t want teachers to be in a situation where they feel stupid, crazy, incompetent.
The responsibility towards the new generations, says Sasa, is greater than ever.
“I am afraid that we are educating the generations that are going abroad. To learn a certain language just so that we could educate the generations who will leave the country after high school or college and go to some other European countries or somewhere else, where they will be a cheap and educated workforce.
The CS government should consider the demands of the strikers on February 1st, Slobodna Evropa writes.
E.Dz.
