National women’s day of action for decreasing the budget on 4 major river restoration and increasing livelihood-and-welfare related budgets

 

 

On past October 17, we gathered for ‘National women’s day of action for decreasing the budget for 4 major river restoration and increasing livelihood-and-welfare related budgets’ in Seoul.

 

We, full-time workers and members from women’s organizations in the Seoul Metropolitan area got together and publicized our demands on decreasing the budget on 4 major river restoration and increasing budgets on public livelihoods and welfares, dressed up cutely with various tools including hand pickets.

 

We started the rally, tapping djembe, African drums and shouting ‘Stop deducing taxes of the rich’ and ‘Stop the 4 major river restoration project.’  Although our tapping was not so excellent, our rhythmic sounds from the djembe made us joyous.

 

The opening speech made by Jeong Moon-Ja, chairperson of KWWA was followed by the comments entitled “Women have talks about budgets for 2010.” A reserve teacher who is employed as a temporary teacher denounced governmental policies and budget on women’s jobs: she complained about poor working conditions of temporary administrative workers working at schools because schools do not give proper tasks and positions to them; and she also revealed the sad reality that the government has continued to employ only temporary (4 month-fixed) teachers instead of regular teachers although the number of regular teachers is in great shortage. In addition, a university student let us know her agonies caused by her high university tuition fees and unemployment rates among the young. President of the Pucheon branch of the NCHM also insisted on the application of 4 social insurances so as to provide job security for care workers.

 

Members from the Ansan Women Workers Association expressed our demands through ‘Superman’, a Korean pop song with changed words and dances, which cheered us up a lot. Although the words were somewhat radical, participants liked the song so much because the words reflect our hard reality very well.

 

After that, a vice president of 참교육학부모회 talked about the governmental budget on education: she criticized the government for the reduction of necessary budgets on education including educational welfare, while it made great investment in English immersion education programs.

 

Lastly, Lee Kang-sil, standing chairperson of the Women Corea who made the last address about the current situations was furious because people have to pay the state debt, likely to surge up to 407 trillion won; she also deplored the Korean reality in which the Korean government collects taxes from the pocket of people while it reduced the taxes for rich people, although governments in other countries impose higher taxes on the rich, if tax revenues are not enough.

 

“Shift the budget on 4 major river restoration to those on women’s jobs, education and livelihood!!!”: we from women’s organizations and environmental groups finalized the rally with a performance to withdraw the governmental policies of 4 major river restoration and tax reduction for rich people and to allocate the budget for women’s jobs, education and public livelihood.

 

This rally, sponsored by the Women’s Action for Decent Lives and Jobs (WADLJ) composed of 39 women’s organizations, was begun from October 17, 2009, and lasted to November 15 for a month across the nation.