Teachers strike ends after salary hike

BEKASI, West Java (JP): Teachers at a private elementary school here, SD Tunas Jakasampurna, have resumed teaching after their demand for a 20 percent salary hike was met by the school foundation.

All 60 teachers at the school staged a protest and refused to teach earlier this week to highlight their demand for the rise.

"The strike lasted about two hours. The teachers sat in the school office while waiting for the conclusion of the foundation meeting," a female teacher who asked not to be identified told The Jakarta Post yesterday.

The teachers are paid between Rp 80,000 (US$34.3) and Rp 190,000 per month depending on their teaching hours.

The school has 48 classes and 2,300 pupils. Each student pays Rp 1.5 million as an entry fee and a monthly fee of Rp 45,000.

Another source who also requested anonymity told the Post that the main reason for the strike was the recruitment by the foundation of higher-paid teachers from the Gandhi Memorial School.

According to the source, the salaries of the new teachers, recruited on a contractual basis, are 10 times higher than those of the regular teachers.

The principal, Alberta Sumartini, and the chairman of the Tunas Jakasampurna foundation, Teddy Darmaputra, were not available for comment.

Regretted

Meanwhile Minister of Education and Culture Wardiman Djojonegoro said that he regretted the teachers' strike.

"Any teachers' strike is costly. They victimize the schoolchildren and the parents," Wardiman told the press after a hearing with House Commission IX for education recently.

He said he had formed a team to investigate the matter.

Wardiman said that he would also investigate a report that the Bekasi office of the Ministry of Education and Culture had arbitrarily cut the salaries of teachers at several other schools in the regency. According to the report many teachers in the regency were forced to subscribe to some publications. The payment for the publications was deducted from the teachers' salaries. (kod)