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May 30th, 2017 
Awake Goy 
nsnbc : Colombia’s teachers are taking their strike into the third week after negotiations stalled. About eight million Colombian students have been out of school since May 12 when public school teachers across the country went on strike to demand better wages and increased education investment.
Colombia’s largest teachers’ union FECODE announced on its Twitter account that it would be ready to resume negotiations with the government on Monday. However, the union also stressed that the administration would have to put better proposals on the table. The strikes started after the government and teachers failed to reach an agreement during negotiations in the first week of March.
Teachers and unions had been rather unwilling to engage in yet another compromise since many of the key promises that prompted them to end previous strikes still haven’t been kept. Besides higher salaries and bonuses that teachers’ union demanded more investment in education infrastructure. Among other demands there are calls for improvement of the quality of school meals, and not least, the recognition of previous agreements.
Education Minister Yaneth Giha denounced the teachers’ decision to strike “unjustified,” while Fecode President Carlos Rivas said “it doesn’t seem logical that there isn’t funding available for education when there’s money for corruption.” Speaking to the teachers strike earlier this month, President Santos said, “we can’t give [the teachers] what they want because we don’t have the resources.”
Slow recovery after the oil prices slumped in 2014, plus rampant tax evasion and systemic nepotism aggravated the situation. The government has struggled to balance its 2017 budget. According to data from the OECD, Colombia ranks poorly in educational outcome and second to last in educational funding with no more than $3,300 per student. 73.8% of Colombian high school graduates perform poorly in math. 51.4% fail to reach a proficient reading and writing level and 56.2% are insufficient in science. Overall, 43% of Colombian students failed to learn reach a proficient level of education compared to post-high school youth in other countries.
A/N – nsnbc 29.05.2017
Source Article from https://nsnbc.me/2017/05/29/negotiations-stalled-colombias-teachers-continue-strike/
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