Strike goes almost unnoticed in run-down Chad
May 14, 2007 (N’DJAMENA) — In most countries, a nationwide strike at schools, universities, hospitals and ministries would pretty much paralyse daily life.
But public services in Chad have been neglected for so long and are in such a run-down state that it is hard to tell that a major labour stoppage is actually under way.
In a desperate bid to force the government to raise their salaries, public service workers are holding a general strike — nearing the end of its second week — which they say they will renew indefinitely until their conditions are met.
“When you look at people’s faces in this country, they are etched with misery. We don’t have even the minimum of things a human being can expect,” said Montanan Ndinaromtan, a union leader and lab technician at N’Djamena’s main hospital.
Landlocked Chad is one of Africa’s newest oil producers, sending some 160,000 barrels per day by pipeline to Cameroon’s Atlantic coast. But President Idriss Deby’s government has been struggling to fight off an armed rebellion in the east and cope with thousands of refugees from Sudan’s war-torn Darfur.
The former French colony remains one of the world’s poorest countries, ranked 171 out of 177 in the U.N. development index, which rates states on criteria such as average income, life expectancy and literacy.
“Our salaries are gone in one week. We cannot afford to feed our children, to educate them, or build even a one-room house. So we’re asking for better living conditions,” Ndinaromtan said.
A slow trickle of patients continued to arrive for treatment at the N’Djamena hospital: skeleton emergency services are still operating. But strike or no strike, the view that greets visitors is pretty much the same.
Exhausted relatives are slumped on corridor floors swatting at flies. Patients lie listlessly on filthy mattresses, waiting for doctors who come late or not at all.
A patient with multiple fractures has a plastic bag filled with stones hanging off his toe: traction; Chadian-style.
“Look at the conditions in which Chadians live,” Ndinaromtan said. “Nothing is working anyway, the strike does not make much difference.” The oil industry was not affected by the stoppage.
OIL WEALTH?
Public workers are demanding a substantial increase to their pension and indemnity payments, which will effectively increase salaries by some 300 per cent.
So far the government has only offered a 10 per cent rise.
“Chad is not poor. It’s a question of management and Chad is very poorly managed,” said Djibrine Assali Hamdallah, secretary general of the UST grouping of unions.
“The country has many resources such as oil — it has never had as much money as it has now.”
It is almost four years since Chad started pumping oil, but most people have yet to see any benefit, unions say.
“Oil money should at least help people a bit — some of it should trickle down through to schools or hospitals,” said Dr Antoinette Moulbaye, an English professor at the University of N’Djamena and vice president of a teaching union.
A university professor for 30 years, Moulbaye lives in a house with no road, no piped water and no mains electricity. “I should at least be living like a middle class person,” he said.
Conditions in Chad’s schools are just as grim as in hospitals. Classrooms which once held 20 children now have ten times that many squeezed into them as investment failed to keep up with population growth.
Teachers admit it is unfortunate they have had to strike just as end-of-year exams approach, but say they were forced into a corner after the government recently received more than $400 million in oil taxes, with more to come in June.
“The government has just received massive amounts of money, which is being used for other purposes such as buying arms. If we wait until September this money will already be spent. So we must act now,” said technology teacher Dr Malloum Soultan.
(Reuters)