- Title: BOLIVIA: More than 500 public workers join Bolivian hunger strike
- Date: 19th April 2012
- Summary: LA PAZ, BOLIVIA (APRIL 18, 2012) (REUTERS) GENERAL VIEW OF TEACHERS' SOCIAL HOUSE FROM WHERE PROTESTING TEACHERS ARE SHUTTING THEMSELVES IN WINDOWLESS ROOMS ON HUNGER STRIKE VARIOUS OF THE PROTEST'S LEADERS THAT HAVE BEEN WITHOUT WATER OR FOOD FOR 24 HOURS BANNER READING "BE CAREFUL, THIS MAN IS FREE [SHOWING IMAGES OF BOLIVIA'S PRESIDENT EVO MORALES]. HIS VICTIMS ARE
- Embargoed: 4th May 2012 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Bolivia, Plurinational State Of
- Country: Bolivia
- Topics: Politics
- Reuters ID: LVAA8GTJ9I4NUE1XB0UVF18C44WS
- Story Text: By Wednesday (April 15) over 500 public workers in Bolivia were participating a nationwide hunger strike to protest government plans to increase the work day without increasing salaries.
Protests against the reforms have been ongoing for weeks, but have come to a head with this drastic turn, which began on Monday (April 16) and is rapidly gaining support.
Here in this brick building in La Paz, a group of teachers shut themselves in a window-less room, refusing to take food or water.
Banners made it clear that they were placing the blame squarely with the country's president, Evo Morales, and his ministers.
Vilma Plata, leader of a group of urban teachers, said the Minister for Education had let them down. City teachers, she said, should be paid more to allow for the higher cost of living.
"The Minister for Education - a demagogue and a liar - has not fulfilled the agreement signed years ago. There is an act of agreement that I show you here, with difficulty, which dates back to May 2010. This agreement stipulates and commits the Ministry to equal urban and rural teacher salaries, progressively at all levels," said Plata.
Morales's government has upset a number of key sectors - namely health workers, teachers, the police and miners - with the labour reforms.
Health workers are angered by proposals to increase the working day by two hours, but with no accompanying increase in salary. After several 24-hour strikes, they went on an indefinite general strike last week.
Doctors, nurses, technicians, dentists and students have held vigils at public health centres to stop police entering and dismissing striking staff.
A doctor in Bolivia earns on average US$ 200 a month, and receives no benefits, pension, or overtime.
President of the Committee for Doctors on Strike, Francisco Sanchez, said workers have taken such extreme action because felt their point-of-view was being ignored.
"We workers have always said that we do not agree to work eight hours of the working day, but instead we demand to be incorporated into the General Labour Act. Unfortunately, the authorities do not take this request seriously, or the arguments we give them. For this reason, in a situation of despair, not knowing what else to do, we have taken this extreme measure, the hunger strike, to raise awareness in front of the authorities," said Sanchez.
In state hospitals across the country, health services have been scaled back with only emergency departments operational.
To cope with the shortfall, the government has deployed 1,500 doctors and medics to help treat people in need.
Speaking at the Government Palace in La Paz on Tuesday (April 17), Morales was not budging.
"[They] refuse to work, and with that, they punish the people with lack of health care. The request to work eight hours is not an initiative of the president; it was presented in the Plurinational Social Meeting, [and was] most applauded by the Bolivian people. Now they put pretexts that they have no equipment, no condition to work. Well, that's a topic we do not understand," he said.
Morales's time in office has been rocked by a series of large-scale protests and strikes that has led to a reduction of support for the country's first indigenous leader. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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