Gabon union leaders go on hunger strike
2011-09-02 21:02
Libreville - The nine leaders of trade unions in Gabon's educational sector on Friday went on hunger strike outside the Saint-Mary Cathedral in Libreville, to support wage claims.
"The leaders of the Conasysed (National Convention of Education Sector Trade Unions) have begun an open-ended hunger strike this morning," Alfred Desire Engone, a Conasysed leader and striker said in the forecourt of the cathedral.
The Conasysed on August 26 sent an open letter to four people including Pope Benedict XVI that they would begin their hunger strike this Friday if they did not receive their salaries, suspended since January 25.
"We have but one demand: that we are restored in our rights and that we get our money," Engone told AFP, adding: "How can it be that fathers of families go unpaid for eight months, and nobody shows any surprise in the country?"
"We're being punished for having demanded education of high quality in Gabon," he protested.
"There was no other solution. We met all the authorities in this country," Marcel Libama, the strikers' spokesman, said.
On Thursday, the Conasysed suspended a teachers' strike that began in April and was considered not very widely followed by the Gabonese press. The nine Conasysed leaders had their salaries docked because of a strike in January.
The civil society movement, Ca Suffit Comme Ca (That's Enough of This), on Thursday demanded that the strike leaders' salaries be paid in a "declaration of support", where it also denounced the "advanced bad shape" of the educational sector.
Since 2008, the public education and health sectors have been affected in the equatorial African country for several months at a time by strike action that has sometimes been widely followed.
Gabon has about 13 000 teachers in the public sector, according to a Conasysed official.
