Updated: 20 September 2025 17:53:41
Kassala Teachers’ Committee Stands Firm: “Rights First” Before School Reopening
moatinoon
The Sudanese Teachers’ Committee in Kassala State has rejected the state education minister’s decision to reopen schools on Sunday, September 21, 2025, citing unpaid salaries and outstanding financial entitlements.
In a statement released on Saturday, the committee denounced the minister’s call for teachers to “put duty before rights” in light of the country’s current crisis. The committee firmly responded: “Rights come before duty,” urging teachers to adopt the slogan “Stay home—rights first” and affirming that “teachers’ rights are a matter of survival.”
According to the statement, the overdue payments include 60% of salaries for August and September 2023, full salaries for eight months from May to December 2024, salaries for July and August 2025, six unpaid holiday bonuses, unpaid clothing allowances, three years of unpaid cash-in-lieu benefits, and an adjustment of meal stipends.
The committee noted that teachers in other states, such as Gedaref, continue to receive their salaries regularly, underscoring what it described as deliberate discrimination against Kassala teachers. Many, it said, have been forced to work as street vendors—or even beg—to survive.
At the same time, the Teachers’ Committee in Khartoum Locality issued a separate statement on Friday, challenging official claims that education has fully resumed in the capital. While authorities announced that 100% of schools were operational and fully supplied with textbooks, the committee reported a starkly different reality: around 80% of Khartoum’s population—including teachers and students—have been displaced, and the city lacks even basic services such as water and electricity.
The committee provided detailed figures for secondary education in Khartoum Locality: only 25 out of 54 schools (less than 50%) are currently functioning, with just 1,024 students and 187 teachers present—a shortage exceeding 50% in some schools. The claim of full textbook availability was also dismissed as false, with teachers reportedly forced to prepare their own materials for first-year secondary students in the absence of textbooks—all while unpaid since the war began.
Concluding its statement, the committee stressed it would not resume the education process until the underlying conditions are addressed—namely, a safe environment, restoration of basic services, and the full payment of teachers’ overdue salaries and entitlements.
