Invited to the "Grand Jury" program this Sunday, March 1st on RFM, Mamadou Ndoye, former Minister of Education, spoke at length about the teachers' strike and the deductions made from their salaries.

While acknowledging the legality of deducting days not worked, Mamadou Ndoye believes the way these deductions were implemented poses a serious problem. The former Secretary General of the Democratic League (LD) sees this deduction as punitive "because there is no transparency in the calculations," he insisted, citing complaints from teachers who have noticed deductions they consider disproportionate. "Some have done the calculations to say, for example, that I was on strike for so many days, and they've taken much more than that. Which is completely unacceptable."

For the former minister, this situation justifies the anger of the unions. "It is therefore legitimate for the unions to rebel against such measures," he stated, once again pointing to the responsibility of the State.

According to him, "the Ministry of Finance cannot undertake cuts that are not understandable to teachers."

Mamadou Ndoye sees this controversy as an illustration of a broader governance problem. "When things aren't clear to the citizen, every time there's a cut, it's a problem," he concluded, implicitly calling for more clarity and dialogue in the management of relations between the government and teachers.

Returning to the demands, the former minister emphasized that teachers had made significant progress in recent years. "From what I understood at least two years ago, the teachers' unions were relatively satisfied (...) they had achieved significant progress in the area of salaries," he recalled.

But according to him, the current tax pressure could jeopardize these gains. "Is the government chipping away at these gains through taxation? If so, obviously there's a problem," Mr. Ndoye stated.