Rabat, Morocco(TMT)- The Moroccan police assaulted on Thursday many teacher trainees who were demonstrating peacefully in Marrakesh, Casablanca and Inzeggane against the recent governmental decrees N: 588-15-2 and N: 589-15-2.
Horrendous images of the assault were shared heavily on social media, illustrating the extent to which brutality was used to muzzle down teacher trainees.
Moroccans were caught outrageous on social media at the sight of such images. Many put the blame on the Moroccan government for not moving a finger to stop such barbarity, including not inviting teacher trainees to the discussion table.
The police according to students was called to maintain law and order, but assaulted them instead, even though the protests, they stress, was peaceful and did not need the supervision of the authorities.
The student trainees are protesting against, as they put it, “two last minute decrees that came from nowhere” and who “prescribe the reduction of the scholarship allocated for teacher trainees, as well as the sequential procedures to begin a teaching career.”
A student trainee, which The Moroccan Times won’t call by name for security reasons, told us that “the first decree states the intention to reduce amount of teacher scholarship aid by half. That is, if the previous teacher trainees used to get a scholarship of 2500 MAD per month, new teacher trainees will get only 1200 MAD. Needless to say, it is impossible for teacher trainees to survive on this sum of money, and they will be forced to rely on their parents for allowances.”
“The second governmental decree has far worse consequences and threatens to generate many unemployed teachers. This decree stipulates that training be separated from recruitment, and that at the end of the one-year-long training program, the teacher trainees will have to sit for another exam (a recruitment test) in order to be officially hired. To further aggravate matters, the 10,000 current teacher trainees across Morocco will have to compete for roughly 7,000 teaching positions according to the Ministry of Finance, leaving 3,000 unemployed with a “unworkable” diploma,” said student trainee told us.
The Moroccan Times.
