Colombian Public Universities Will Go On Strike

On Wednesday, Oct. 10th,  public universities' teachers and students will mobilize to ask for more resources from the national government. The march will start at 9 a.m. (local time) and the Indigenous National Organization (ONI) and the Sena Union will join the protests.

RELATED:
Colombia's Duque Expands Taxes to Lower Classes, Breaking Campaign Promise

Wednesday march will happen to protest against a long lack of budget for public education that has been deepened with the current government. The Colombian Students Movement is calling for a general national strike that is due to begin on Oct. 11th. The students will fight for an autonomous and democratic education as a basic human right, as was stated in a statement released.

"With the conviction that education is the fundamental tool to settle the abysmal social, moral and intellectual inequality of the nation, the Colombian Student Movement, nourished by dreams, returns to manifest itself through processes of organization, mobilization and articulation at the national level," said the statement.

Students are protesting due to an extreme budget deficit in public education, according to the University State System (SUE). Since 1992 public universities' budget has not risen, as is established in article 86 of the law number 30. The lack of resources is affecting the payment to staff, and does not permit the financing in infrastructure improvements and prohibits the teachers' capacitation. 

The current government does not give the adequate resources for public universities to continue fulfilling the social function. The main problem has to do with Article 86 because the legislator never thought about the growth of the universities and thought that they were going to be static," said the director of the SUE, Jairo Miguel Torres Oviedo.

The Colombian government, led by far-right President Ivan Duque, has yet to give an answer to the demands and has not given any statements on the matter.