Rabat, Morocco (TMT)- Morocco’s head of the government, Abdellilah Benkirane, said during a national gathering of the party he is the general secretary of, the Justice and Development party, that the Moroccan government will not cancel the two decrees that triggered a wave of protests from teacher trainees in various Moroccan cities.
Benkirane, who spoke this weekend in Salé, also said that he is not responsible for the wave of violence that happened during the protests, especially in the wake of documented videos featuring police officers assaulting many teacher trainees.
“We won’t cancel the two decrees regarding teacher trainees, even if this [the wave of protests] lead to the overthrow of the government,” Benkirane stressed.
“I am ready to step out if I am found directly responsible for the violence [against teacher trainees] that happened,” Benkirane angrily stated.
The student trainees are protesting against recent governmental decrees N: 588-15-2 and N: 589-15-2, which were enacted after teacher trainees passed a “teacher acceptance exam” and were officially accepted as “prospective teachers,” pending the finishing of a training.
A student trainee told The Moroccan Times, in a previous article, 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 The Moroccan Times.
The Moroccan Times.
