TEACHERS’ unions in the north yesterday threatened a fresh wave of industrial action after it was announced the running of two schools would be taken over by a Turkish education conglomerate.
The schools in question are a primary and secondary school attached to the ‘state’–owned Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU) in Famagusta.
“Piece by piece our assets are being sold off. The next target is the university itself,” Huseyin Ozkaramanli, head of EMU’s DAU-SEN union, warned yesterday. He believes businessmen behind Turkish-owned Doga (Nature) College, which has signed a ten-year lease to run the EMU’s primary and secondary establishments, have their sights set on the money making potential of EMU’s approximately 20,000 students.
Industrial action has been rife in the north since the National Unity Party (UBP) administration began implementation last year of what unions describe as an austerity package designed by the Turkish government in Ankara.
In June 2010, the ‘state’-run airline, Cyprus Turkish Airlines (CTA) was disbanded after efforts to sell it to private Turkish airline Atlas Jet collapsed in chaos. A new airline is expected to be unveiled in the coming months, this time predominantly privately owned. Plans to privatise other ‘state’-run enterprises, such as electricity provider, telecom and Ercan Airport are also in the pipeline.
Although the college and primary school in question were known to be in severe financial difficulties, unions believe their being taken over by Doga College is a “purely political move”.
“If their [the administration’s] aim had been to save the school, then it could have been done. The staff were willing to make sacrifices. But this was not the aim; the aim was and is to sell off our assets to foreign investors,” Ozkaramanli said, adding that his union, with the backing of other teachers’ unions, would “fight the privatisation programme all the way”. Earlier plans for a one-day strike by lecturers at EMU were put on hold yesterday, pending hopes for an annulment of the deal. However, teachers’ unions will today deliver a formal protest to the north’s ‘council of ministers’.
Ozkaramanli attacked the Turkish Cypriot administration and EMU’s board of directors, saying that the deal between EMU and Doga College had been done in secret, and that no tender had been issued – an accusation identical to the one leveled against the north’s administration during the liquidation of CTA last year.
“This is not simply about a school being sold off; it’s about an attack on the community and the assets that belong to that school,” head of the Turkish Cypriot Secondary School Teachers Unions (KTOEOS) Tahir Gokcebel said yesterday. He added his belief that once the school’s administration was taken over by Doga College, its predominantly Turkish Cypriot staff would be laid off and replaced by cheaper teachers from Turkey.
“At a time when unemployment is already running at more than 20 per cent, how can the government do such things?” he asked, adding that if the public sector employment in the north continued to be eroded it would lead to the destruction of the Turkish Cypriot middle class.
The north’s education ‘minister’ Kemal Durust yesterday claimed he had known nothing of the deal until after its signing and stressed that EMU was an autonomous body that did not need his sanction to enter into a deal such as the one signed with Doga College.
