Lithuanian teachers protest against low salaries

Lithuanian school teachers and other pedagogical workers staged a protest Monday, demanding effective education system reforms and higher salaries.

Many of the protesters were carrying travel suitcases as symbols of emigration, for which low salaries is one of the reasons in the Baltic country.

Professional unions representing teachers and other education workers submitted a broad list of demands to the government, among them, higher salaries for teachers, also pre-school and pre-primary pedagogues, and reducing the number of schoolchildren in classes.

The protesters insist that number of schoolchildren in 1-4 school year classes should not exceed 22, in 5-12 year classes, 25.

Another demand is to allocate 3.5 million euros (3.9 million U.S. dollars) in this year's budget for severance pay to pensionable age teachers who leave the education system on their own accord, ELTA news agency reported.

Nerijus Maciulis, chief economist at Swedbank in Vilnius, noted earlier in his comment on social network that Lithuanian teachers are paid the least in Europe, including non-member states of the European Union (EU).

Referring to the data from Eurydice, the Education Information Network in Europe, Maciulis noted that Lithuanian teachers' maximum pre-tax annual salary amounts to 6,954 euros, while a teacher in Romania, considered as one of the poorest EU members, receive 8,297 euros per year. (1 euro = 1.12 U.S. dollars) Endit