Thursday, March 15, 2007

Guatemalan Teachers: No Privatization

What will happen in the US when this happens here? I wonder...

Guatemala, Mar 14 (Prensa Latina) Teachers took to the streets of Guatemala City on Wednesday to demand socioeconomic improvements and protest government plans to privatize education.

At least 10,000 teachers took part in the largest demonstration of the year, staged from the Ministry of Education to the Congress of the Republic.

Union leader Hugo Efrain Bareda described a government-promoted Education Reform bill currently under discussion in Congress as a violation of the Constitution.

Romualdo Maldonado, from the teachers union in western Quetzaltenango, said the education reform is part of neoliberal measures to curb the State s role.

Guatemala has about 90,000 state teachers in the 17,000 public schools countrywide.

State teachers have declared themselves in permanent assembly and threatened new steps if the government fails to back down from its neoliberal, privatizing program.

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