The collapse of the value of the local currency in the liberated areas triggers a wave of strikes in the education sector
English - Wednesday 20 September 2023 الساعة 06:24 pm
Aden, NewsYemen, exclusive:
The wave of strikes taking place in the education sector in the liberated areas highlights one of the repercussions of the collapse of the value of the local currency over the past years and the large difference between its value today and what it was before the outbreak of war in 2015.
Since last Sunday, five government universities in the liberated areas have been witnessing a comprehensive strike, in protest against the refusal to implement their demands to improve the living conditions of their members, in implementation of a joint statement announced by the unions of the universities of Aden, Lahj, Abyan, and Shabwa, and the University of Taiz joined them.
Teaching unions at public universities expressed, in their statement, their dissatisfaction with what they described as deliberate neglect by the government in meeting the demands it raised during the past periods, most recently in the statement of the protest that was organized in front of the Al-Ma’ashiq presidential palace in the capital, Aden, on August 27.
In its statement, the union mentioned a list of these demands, the most important of which was improving the living situation by restoring the value of the salary to what it was before March 2015, noting that the salary of a university professor at the time was worth about 1,200 US dollars, compared to only about 200 dollars now.
While public schools in the capital, Aden, are currently witnessing a strike to reject the Ministry of Finance’s decision to transfer the disbursement of salaries to commercial banks, they had previously witnessed a similar strike last year to demand raising wages and disbursing suspended bonuses, and it was lifted after the intervention of Governor Ahmed Lamlas and his pledge to disburse them from the governorate’s revenues.
Despite the regularity of the legitimate government in disbursing salaries to all employees in the liberated areas compared to areas controlled by the Houthi militias, the significant collapse in the value of the local currency in recent years has lost the value of these salaries and placed them in an unequal confrontation with the prices of goods, which have witnessed a continuous rise with the stability of the value of the salary in the local currency.
Before the outbreak of war in Yemen in late March of 2016, the exchange rate of the US dollar was about 215 riyals, while it currently stands at 1,425 riyals in the liberated areas, which means that the average teacher’s salary, which before the war was worth about 250 dollars, is now worth no more than 35 dollars in the liberated areas.
After the war, the legitimate government resorted to printing the local currency without a cover of hard currency, causing its value to collapse, and this was compounded when, in late 2018, the Houthi militias banned the circulation of the new currency, which led to its accumulation in the liberated areas and the loss of its value against foreign currencies, according to a report issued by World Bank last May.
The report indicates that the Yemeni riyal stabilized for a brief period in early 2019 following Saudi Arabia’s large deposit of foreign currencies at the central bank in Aden. As this deposit was gradually exhausted, the Houthis announced that Sanaa would no longer accept new banknotes issued by the internationally recognized government which effectively led to a separation of monetary policy between the two regions.
Regarding the reasons for the stability of the currency in areas controlled by the Houthi group, the World Bank report indicates that the banking and commercial center of Yemen remains in Sana’a, which is controlled by the group, which means that it benefits from the increase in inflows of expatriate remittances and foreign aid implemented through the official banking system, while the value of the riyal continued to decline in areas controlled by the internationally recognized government.
The report presents a picture of the failure of the government’s performance in the economic aspect on the one hand, and on the other hand its failure to confront the economic battle waged against it by the Houthi militias, and the catastrophic repercussions this caused, on top of which is the collapse of the value of the local currency, which has become the primary driver of the strike scene that the liberated areas in the education sector are suffering from today.
