Education ministry strikers to march on presidential palace
Striking education ministry staff will gather outside the finance ministry at 3pm on November 5 and then head to the presidential palace, unions Peo and Sek say.
Staff at the education ministry who are on strike, among them night school instructors and employees of its support programmes, plan to demonstrate at the presidential palace on Thursday. As Cyprus Mail reports, the mobilisation is being organised by the trade unions Peo and Sek, which held rallies across every district on Monday afternoon.
The campaign will peak at 3pm on November 5 with a gathering outside the finance ministry, from which participants will march to the palace. The unions are pressing the government to settle two disputes: pay over the summer for permanent staff left without wages or unemployment benefit while programmes are dormant, and immediate work for long-serving colleagues who are still jobless.
“It is not possible for workers to remain without income for months,” the unions said in a joint statement.
What it means for residents
The dispute touches families who depend on these programmes and on the staff who run them, so the standoff has a direct bearing on household budgets and on services that many residents use.
- Programme users should check whether their sessions or support continues while staff are on strike.
- Workers in the schemes face a second summer without wages or benefits unless the two demands are met.
- Taxpayers may end up funding a settlement that keeps skilled staff in the education system rather than losing them.
This text is written from the source article and is not a translation of it.
