The right to withhold labour is enshrined in the Constitution. But this fundamental right should not be trivialised as Knut does by continually threatening to call teachers out on strike.
Yesterday Knut secretary general Wilson Sossion said teachers will go on strike on January 2, 2019, to protest against “outstanding matters”. These include classroom conditions, the right to promotion, and, most contentious, the transfer of 3,094 head teachers.
Sossion said transferring teachers destabilises their families who have become part of local communities.
It is normal for public officers to be moved around the country. Teachers and heads will stagnate if they do not occasionally change their workplace. Schools too will not benefit from the breath of fresh air that comes with a new leader.
Part of the problem is that teachers do not want to go to isolated rural areas. One solution, as in Ethiopia, is to send new young teachers to work in rural areas for two years before they are transferred to urban areas.
But Knut cannot insist that teachers should never be transferred.
Quote of the day: "The equilibrium you admire in me is an unstable one, difficult to maintain. My inner life was split early between the call of the Ancestors and the call of Europe, between the exigencies of black-African culture and those of modern life."
Léopold Sédar Senghor
The first
President of Senegal
died on December 20, 2001
