August 1, 2004 After the protest rally held on Saturday in front of the education ministry by freelance teachers, the government said it was in talks with the management and planning organization to offer full employment and benefits to nearly 40,000 freelance teachers. The freelance teachers, some of whom have worked more than seven years on a per-hour basis, complained that they receive the lowest salaries among the government employees. The promise has been made only after the teachers’ rallied, just as the case of backed up benefits, which the government remembered to pay after four years, only after the teachers’ demonstrations, teacher Najmeh Mohammadi tells Radio Farda’s broadcaster Maryam Manzoori. “When you take a copy of the newspaper to the officials, they would say the statements in the papers are made only for the papers, not to be followed up by action,” she adds.
