A model of the Tsementnaya Slobodka settlement at the “Crimean Bridge: a fantastic reality” museum exhibition in the gallery of the East Crimean Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve in Kerch. (c) Vladislav Sergienko / RIA Novosti. All rights reserved.This month, Russia marked the third anniversary of its seizure and annexation of the Crimean peninsula, but the years since haven’t gone entirely smoothly. State employees such as teachers and medical workers have taken to the streets to demand job security and decent wages. Social inequality blights Crimea – what will the occupying authorities do about it?
Hungry young minds and their hungrier teachers
“Give teachers their salaries”, “How long can this go on?”, “Hungry teachers can’t teach” – read the slogans on the placards held by a couple of dozen teachers at a recent demonstration in the centre of Simferopol, the administrative capital of Crimea. At Crimea’s only Cossack Military Academy, staff were demanding decent pay for their labours.
Ilya Bolshedvorov, head of Crimea’s anti-corruption committee and one of the protesters, told me what had brought them to these extremes. The academy’s staff are forced to live off the cadets’ families: although tuition is formally free, parents continually have to pay the teachers out of their own pockets. The Crimean Ministry of Education refuses to provide the Academy’s statutory funding or approve its accounts. It has also made several attempts to have the Academy’s licence revoked, but these have been rejected by the courts.
