Last update - 00:00 18/03/2007
Strike over unpaid wages shuts Bedouin pre-schools in Negev
By Mijal Grinberg, Haaretz Correspondent
Some 150 private Bedouin pre-schools went on strike as of Sunday, after failing to receive promised funds from the Education Ministry.
The strike affects 4500 children enrolled in the pre-schools.
The Chairman of the Al Amana Non-Governmental Organization, which runs 16 private pre-schools, said that 250 teachers and assistant teachers have not received their wages due to the delay in transfer of the funds, which were to due last September.
As of the beginning of this school year, the Education Ministry has refused to transfer the funds required by the mandatory education law to the five NGOs which run the private Bedouin pre-schools. According to the Education Ministry, the funds have not been transferred because many of the pre-schools are run from private homes, which have not been approved by the Committee for Planning and Building to serve as pre-schools.
Until this school year, the Education Ministry had not demanded that the pre-schools attain a license from the Committee for Planning and Building, and the funds were transferred. This year, Dorit Morag, the legal advisor to the Education Ministry, ruled that funding would be cut to the schools which lack a license.
The Education Ministry has failed to find a solution for the severe lack of pre-schools in the Bedouin community, and has not built additional ones. In reaction to this, NGO's were formed a few years ago by local Bedouins for the purpose of running pre-schools in the seven permanent Bedouin settlements in Israel.
These schools are especially critical to the children that live in unrecognized villages in which public schools cannot be built. Due to Education Ministry's failure to find a solution for the lack of pre-schools, over 50 percent of the Bedouin pre-schools belong to NGO's.