hyperinflation
Teachers in Venezuela demonstrate for better salaries
Public employees, teachers and pensioners are demonstrating for higher salaries and pensions and for full benefits to be paid out. photo
© Ariana Cubillos/AP/dpa
Poverty is rampant in Venezuela. Inflation recently galloped to over 300 percent. Millions of people are leaving the country. And in Caracas, teachers are no longer the only ones to take to the streets.
Numerous teachers and other civil servants as well as pensioners have demonstrated in the South American crisis country of Venezuela for higher wages and pensions. “This call, which teachers originally started, grew into something bigger,” wrote the Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional on Monday (local time). “To a large demonstration attended by all the public sector unions in the country.”
Photos showed a demonstrator putting chicken feet in a pot to draw attention to rampant poverty. “Our salary is a pittance, it’s not enough for anything, what we get every month is a mockery,” quoted “El Nacional” a teacher at a public school in the capital Caracas. Inflation in Venezuela rose to more than 300 percent last year, according to estimates by independent financial experts.
The country, ruled authoritarian by President Nicolás Maduro, has been in a deep political, economic and humanitarian crisis for years, despite one of the largest oil reserves in the world, which was exacerbated by the corona pandemic. The health system is on the ground. According to statistics, more than seven million people have left Venezuela because of poverty and violence.