Benin in bid to end social unrest in public sector

Benin's government has taken measures aimed at ending social unrest in the education, health and judicial sectors where workers have been engaging in strikes to demand improvement of their living and working conditions, an official source said Tuesday.

In the education sector, the government has decided to pay a monthly allowance of 10,000 CFA Francs (16 U.S. dollars) to all teachers from nursery school to tertiary institutions.

Although the allowance will be backdated to Jan. 1, 2015, the payment will be made as from Sept. 1, 2015, the source said.

At the same time, the statement said, the government had decided to disburse a subsidy of over 6.5 billion CFA Francs to nursery, primary and secondary schools as well as tertiary colleges in order to reinforce their operation budgets.

With regards to the health sector, the government affirmed that talks with paramedics who have been on strike since March 27, 2014, had ended up with an agreement.

The government had agreed to recruit 7,000 health workers to ensure smooth running of health centers.

As for the judicial sector, the government had not only agreed to employ more judges, but it had also accepted to provide fuel allowance to judges, magistrates, court clerks and all other workers in the judicial sector.

Since 2012, Benin has witnessed successive multisectorial strikes that have mostly affected the judicial, health, finance and education sectors. Endi