Just as the country’s schools are due to return from the weekend’s Carnaval break, school staff have declared a one-day strike for next Friday (February 20). At issue is the government’s plan to hand the running of schools over to municipalities, and the “precarious nature of most workers’ contracts”. Announcing the strike on Tuesday, the school workers national federation declared that the government was intent on “gratuitously and universally destroying state education”.
“The only responsibility for this strike lies with the Ministry of Education which has done everything to ensure that all who work in schools are unsatisfied,” federation spokesman Artur Sequeira told reporters, stressing he hopes that the strike – which will be supported by thousands – “leaves a message for the next government”.
Whatever it does, it will cause upheaval for hundreds of thousands of children and their parents.
