Students, military clash as general strike bites

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Wednesday 14 June 2006

GUINEA: Students, military clash as general strike bites


©  Alhassan Sillah/IRIN

Prices of staple items such as rice are rising out of reach for many Guineans.

CONAKRY, 12 Jun 2006 (IRIN) - Security forces fired teargas and plastic bullets at hundreds of student protesters on Monday who were demanding that the government resign amidst deepening economic hardship and a general strike that entered its fifth day.

“Change today or never,” read placards held by some of the roughly 500 student demonstrators. They demanded that the government negotiate in good faith with workers’ unions that are leading the strike action to demand lower prices for fuel and rice.

The students clashed with about 200 security forces who used batons to beat them back before they reached parliament. At least three people were seriously injured and about 20 others were arrested, according to eyewitnesses.

By Monday afternoon, Conakry’s city centre was calm, but violence erupted in the northern neighbourhoods of Bambeto, Matoto and Kipe where unemployed youths rioted and looted. Unrest was also reported in the northern town of Labe, where youths ransacked the local government administrative office.

“This is a continued feature of Guinean public life,” West Africa analyst Bram Posthumus, who has reported extensively on Guinea, told IRIN. “What would be more worrying is if this became generalised chaos.”

Although fighting occasionally spilled across the border into Guinea from Sierra Leone and Liberia, the country has largely been spared from the conflict that wracked its neighbours. There have been persistent fears that a bloody power struggle could ensue should ailing President Lansana Conte die suddenly. However, Fode Bangoura surfaced as a possible heir apparent during a government reshuffle in May that saw hardliners replace reformers. Bangoura, who has been close to Conte for years, was appointed to head the powerful Ministry of State for Presidential Affairs.

With the reappearance of the hardliners, an impasse between the administration and strike leaders appears more likely than a compromise in the short term. It is the second time Guineans have undertaken a general strike this year. Unions claimed victory when the government promised salary increases for government workers and a new minimum wage for everyone else.

But inflation has flattened those gains.

Trade unions have taken over from a fractured and weak political opposition as the national voice of discontent. As a result of the strike, which includes some 12,000 teachers, students are unable to take their final exams for their diplomas. They blame the government for failing to compromise with the unions, thus threatening to derail their entry into an increasingly disadvantaged workforce.

Teachers are demanding higher salaries than those they were allocated in 2003.

“That old salary is only equivalent to the cost of a bag of rice nowadays and nothing more so we want the government to pay us a legitimate salary,” one striking teacher told IRIN by telephone from the town of Gueckedou.

The government said in a statement on Saturday that it was pursuing negotiations with the unions and proposed measures including paying a year’s worth of pension arrears to 236 retired teachers. But by Monday, the leading Confederation of Guinean Workers (CNTG) and the Union Syndicate of Guinean Workers (USTG) had not yet responded.

The government had offered wage rises for government workers last week, but the increases were rejected as they translated into an increment of less than US $1 a month for most civil servants.

The price hike on fuel is due in part to the rising cost of oil worldwide. But it is also due to a rollback of subsidies for basic goods, including rice, as Guinea attempts to adhere to economic reform measures set forth by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Guinea, despite vast natural resources, is one of the world’s poorest countries. With inflation at nearly 30 percent and the local currency’s value falling daily, the cost of a 50-kilogram sack of rice is spiralling out of control to over US $25 – more than half of a civil servant’s monthly wage. Daily life has become tougher and tougher in past years for Guinea’s eight million people.

Under IMF policy, Guinea adopted a floating exchange rate on 1 March 2005, and as a result the Guinean Franc has free-fallen, losing 38 percent of its value against currencies like the dollar, according to the IMF.

[ENDS]


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