Hundreds of public sector workers across Guinea-Bissau, including nurses, doctors and civil servants, are striking over salary arrears, leaving basic services running at minimum capacity.

The National Union of Guinea-Bissauan Workers (UNTG) declared the three-day strike 7 October.

“The strike has been followed by 95 percent of public sector workers across the country,” said Laureano Pereira da Costa, UNTG spokesperson.

Taxi and truck drivers joined the three-day strike, he said, demanding that transport police cease routinely stopping vehicles to extract bribes on major roads.

Civil servants across the government have not been paid in three months, according to Zubaida Rasul, senior political affairs officer at the UN Peacebuilding Support Office in Guinea-Bissau (UNOGBIS). The government paid one month of back-pay at the end of September but three months’ salary is owed, while security forces were not paid at all in September, she said.

In addition to salary, workers are demanding transport stipends to keep up with the increased cost of living. Medical staff are demanding a government-promised stipend for their efforts to tackle a cholera epidemic that has swept across the country, and which the government claims it is unable to control.

Staff at the centre of epidemiology, which is tasked with tracing the roots of the epidemic, no longer expect to be paid regularly, Augostino Betunda, joint director of services told IRIN.

Civil servants in several ministries, including fisheries, agriculture and health, regularly face salary arrears in Guinea Bissau, said Rui Alfonso Sami, director of rural growth at the Ministry of Agriculture.

In response to the strike Prime Minister Carlos Correia stated in a press release, "Workers have the obligation to ensure minimum services required under the law," adding strikers’ salaries will be docked for the duration of the strike.

Prime Minister Correia’s government was sworn in in August 2008, stressing an intention to organise national elections in November, restore public order and pay regular wages.

No capacity

Ministries across the Guinea-Bissau government spend the bulk of their revenue on meeting salary payments, and have little to none left over to build capacity, develop policies or run programmes, the Agriculture Ministry’s Sami told IRIN.

With hefty debt repayments to the World Bank and African Development Bank, “the government is working hard to dig itself out of an external debt hole, which leaves it insufficient funds to regularly meet salaries”, said Rasul of UNOGBIS.

Representatives from international donors and financial institutions are meeting with the government to discuss solutions to the current salary crisis.

IRIN 

Zimbabwe's 4.5 million students will not receive what was once the golden standard of education in Africa--or any education at all this school year.
Political violence during the country's recent presidential elections hit schools hard with strikes, murder and violence against teachers, and looting. Some schools were turned into places of torture after teachers were driven out.

The country's educators were targeted by Zimbabwe's ZANU-PF party, for alleged support of the opposition.

Now the country faces a second crisis due to economic troubles and an inflation rate of two trillion percent. The few teachers still around have seen their salaries made worthless and are unable to acquire teaching supplies. "We don't even have chalk, or red pens, never mind books," says Amos Musoni, one of the few teachers still working. Schools like the one where Musoni works have given up educating and simply entertain the children before sending them off for lack of equipment.

Not even Zimbabwe's four top universities have been spared. The universities have been unable to open without funds, water, or electricity, like many public schools. College students, unable to register, are left waiting for more information.
Pass rates in the nation went from 72 to eleven percent, with many schools not seeing even one pass. Schools in the countries have not been able to prepare students for tests without timetables or even the results from last year.

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Some government health employees returned to work on 18 September after the Federation of Health Workers Union announced the temporary suspension of its most recent 10-day strike.

The union's secretary general, Pierrette Tolno, told IRIN that though President Lansana Conte agreed to union demands on 17 September, the suspension is only temporary as the union waits to see if the government will give the country's more than 7,000 public health employees a bigger share of the 2009 budget, "A signature is one thing and the application of the statute is another."

According to the government's Guinean Press Agency, there were 10 deaths at Conakry's Donka Hospital during the most recent 10-day strike, which followed an earlier strike August 2008 that had been temporarily called off.

Some of the union's demands include salary increases, school stipends, 18-months' back pay that the union says the government owes 625 workers, and uniforms.

Tolno told IRIN the union is carefully watching government budget talks. "The real work starts now to respect deadlines." Tolno says the government is expected to back up its promises with money in the 2009 budget, which is to be decided during budget talks scheduled to begin 25 September.

Health workers reporting back to the country's largest hospital, Ignace Deen Hospital, found mostly empty waiting rooms.

A doctor in the hospital's neurology department, Oumar Sylla, said his first day back at work was mostly quiet, "This morning, we donned our white coats again. But as this was the first day following our strike, I only had three consultations during the eight-hour workday. Normally, we have about 20 per day."

An anaesthesiologist at the capital's Donka Hospital, Toure Aminata, said she and her colleagues also returned to their jobs, "We arrived early this morning and reported to our departments. Right now I am preparing a patient for a surgical procedure."

Soriba Bangoura, the parent of a hospital patient, said the President's signing was overdue.
 
"It was time for him to sign the [contested] statute because if not, we were going to have more deaths in our hospital. Poor patients who were not cared for, who could not go to private clinics because they did not have the money, were forced to go home to die in their homes." said Bangoura
Union-led strikes during early 2007 in Guinea shuttered businesses and claimed more than 100 lives. Protesters’ demands included relief from rising food and fuel prices, better work conditions and the departure of the ailing President Lansana Conte, who has ruled for 24 years since seizing power militarily in 1984.

Recently, youths on the outskirts of the capital took to the streets to protest months-long electricity blackouts, which was a main grievance during the deadly 2007 strikes.

IRIN 

Entering a second day of a near-total work stoppage in and around the capital Conakry, almost all the city’s government health care workers continued to refuse to perform most medical services as they hold out for back pay, a salary increase and promotions.

A similar strike last month also grounded medical services.

The strike continuation continues to paralyse public health care facilities.The Donka University Hospital, the country’s largest, remained shuttered on the capital’s outskirts.

“There is not even a minimum level of emergency services,” said a would-be patient returning to her house in the Camayenne neighbourhood not far from the hospital, who wanted to remain anonymous.

Another turned-away patient, Doumbouya Hadjab Mariama, said the government needs to find a way to end this strike soon, “If not, it is the people who will suffer. I am coming back from Donka hospital where my baby who has bronchitis was not able to get care because of the doctors’ strike.”

She said she had arrived at the hospital early in the hopes of intercepting a doctor.
At the Ignace Deen University Hospital in Conakry, which normally has more than 1,000 visits per day, the doors were also shut. Down the corridors, there were no hospital staff to tend to hospitalised patients.

“Since Monday [08 September], we have been left to ourselves here. There are no doctors,” said a trauma unit patient who did not want to share his name.

Hospital workers say they will continue to strike until their demands are met.

“To show our determination,” said a surgeon on strike who did not want to reveal his identity, “we refused to collect our August earnings yesterday morning [08 September].”

Health worker union leader Pierrette Tolno told IRIN the strike will continue until the government changes workers’ conditions, which she says have remained unchanged since 1999.

She added the health workers on strike want 18 months of back pay for 625 health workers and promotions.

IRIN 

Six armed robbers on Sunday 31st August 2008 reportedly hit the village of Ndungu-kebbeh in North Bank Region, and one of the armed robbers reportedly lost his life in the act, the police have revealed.

According to the Police Public Relation Officer, ASP Sulayman Secka, who alongside the Inspector General of Police, Essa Badgie, Famara Jallow, Commisioner of Operations and Yankuba Sonko, Crime Management

Co-ordinator visited the scene on last Monday, six men armed with guns went to the house of one Alagie Ebrima Bah between the early hours of 2.00 a.m. and 3.00 a.m., broke into his house and demanded money from him at gunpoint.

He explained that after the man told them that he has no money and their intensive search of the house, they started to hit him, thus he sustained injuries.

At that juncture the man cried for help and the neighbourhood came out, provoking the robbers to start firing, and a result one of them lost his life. However one of five other attackers who managed to escape by running into the bush is believed to have escaped with gunshot wound, as traces of blood was seen along their escape route.

Meanwhile the body of the unidentified slain attacker has been taken to mortuary at the Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital.