A teachers’ strike over pay and working conditions is disrupting schools across Libya and delaying the start of the new academic year.<\/p>\n
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Teachers began protesting on September 13, the day schools were due to reopen, staging sit-ins outside \u200cschools and government buildings in the capital, Tripoli. Two weeks later, the teachers union escalated the campaign into an open-ended, nationwide strike across public schools.<\/p>\n
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The walkout is the latest upheaval in a country still grappling with instability years after the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi. Libya has also faced widespread power cuts this summer and \u2060labour unrest that recently disrupted output at its largest oilfield.<\/p>\n
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Teachers say low salaries and deteriorating school conditions have pushed them to act.<\/p>\n
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“These are not demands, but rather rights, and rights have to be taken,” said Mustafa Al-Bahilil, Head of the teachers union in Ain Zara on Tripoli’s southern outskirts.<\/p>\n
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Teachers face difficulties ranging from a lack of computer labs to desks so worn out that they are unusable, often forcing staff and parents to pay for equipment themselves.<\/p>\n
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Many teachers have to work second jobs because their salaries are so low, said Tripoli \u200cteacher \u2060Hamza al-Firjani. “They get promises, but all of them are fake promises,” he said.<\/p>\n
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The Ministry of Education did not immediately respond to a Reuters<\/em> request for an interview.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Teachers have also joined the strike in Benghazi in eastern Libya. The country has been divided between rival administrations in the east and \u2060west since a 2014 civil war.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mohammed Al-Jahawi, head of the teachers union in Benghazi, said the strikes were driven by surging food and other costs which had left many teachers unable to meet their \u2060basic needs.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The prospect of a long disruption has left many parents anxious. Salah Awad, a 47-year-old father of three students in Benghazi, said he hoped that the teachers’ needs were \u2060addressed, but he feared the strike was going to hurt students.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “This is not the right time for a strike,” he said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n –Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":47037,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-47036","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Teachers' strike over pay and working conditions is disrupting schools across Libya","published_date":"2026-10-01 16:19:59","news_description":"Teachers' strike over pay and working conditions is disrupting schools across Libya","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/47036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/47036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47038,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/47036\/revisions\/47038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=47036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}