Education Unions threaten to go on general strike

Some 300 members of the Education and Science Trade Unions, representing a series of districts, picketed the Government's building on September 1. They claim higher wages and menace they will stage large-scale protests, unless they are heard. The protesters represent schools from Cantemir, Drochia, Cimislia, Ialoveni, Anenii-Noi, Straseni, Dubasari and Gagauzia. Armed with loud speakers, little bells and posters, the teachers would chant: “Stop defying the education!”, “Down with the people's poverty!”, “Protect the children and teachers!” An educator from a Cantemir kindergarten has told Info-Prim Neo she's got a salary of 700 lei, and has vowed she will pay her travels to Chisinau every day to ask for more, if necessary. According to the Education Union leader, Ion Bulat, they decided to picket the Government because the unions' claims have been on the Government's table for 8 months, without yielding any result. “In the summer we had some 10 meetings with representatives of the Government, the last one – last Saturday, with Mrs. Prime-Minister. We've been told it's hard, there are calamities, floods, droughts. As a rule, when there is poverty in a country, the governments try to do something to improve the people's situation, but this Government uses them to shirk, not to solve things,” Ion Bulat said. The protesters' claim would cost the Government 113 million lei, “money going to the state budget in 2 days,” Bulat says. The unions are intend to picket the Government for 5 days, till the end of this week. “Unless we get the expected results, we'll call on everybody to join our protest meeting on September 17, when all the education employees will come. We will propose our members to start a general strike for an unlimited period,” the leader of the Chisinau branch of the Education Unions Mihai Paladi says .