Nine million students hit by Colombian teachers’ strike

Teachers across Colombia have been protesting for 15 days over what they describe as unfair working conditions: low pay, inferior healthcare plans, and stringent evaluations. Some of them have traveled for days to get to Colombia’s capital, Bogota.

During the last Presidential election, candidates promised big changes to guarantee the vote of public teachers, an important voting block, but then didn’t deliver.

Teachers in Colombia make between $500 to $900 dollars a month – and their purchasing power has fallen by 28 percent in the last decade.

The new government, for its part, is now offering a 12 percent increase in salaries over 4 years, and promising to reform the evaluation system.

Despite inconveniences, some parents say that they support the strike because it is fair.

“Our schools’ infrastructure is precarious. Each class has around 45 students. It’s impossible,” mother Daisy Ordoñex tells Al Jazeera.