Yemen calls on UNICEF to investigate Houthis looting of teachers’ dues

The Yemeni government has asked the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to open an investigation into the Houthi militia’s looting of dues paid to teachers in Ibb governorate as part of the stimulus scheme in money to support teachers in schools.

Yemen’s Information Minister, Muammar Al-Eryani, confirmed that the Houthi terrorist militia’s looting of the rights of dozens of female teachers in Ibb governorate confirms that they are “a gang that intends by any means to humiliate, starve and impoverish the Yemenis”.

Al-Eryani accused the Houthi militia of enforcing lists of project beneficiaries outside the lists of state employees in the education sector by refraining from paying employees’ salaries for 8 years.

He added: “The Houthi militia has not contented itself with imposing lists of project beneficiaries outside the lists of state employees under the guise of ‘effective teachers’, but rather has deliberately plundered the incentives of hundreds of them, in one moment in which continued to plunder their salaries for 8 years, leaving behind a significant drop in educational attainment and high dropout rates. It is the greatest human tragedy in the world.”

Yemen’s information minister has called on UNICEF to open an investigation into the incident and review the current incentive delivery mechanism, which he said “enabled the Houthi militia to put thousands of its members on the lists of beneficiaries of the project, which aims to improve the living conditions of male and female teachers and prevent the collapse of the educational process in the areas controlled by the militias”.

Dozens of teachers, men and women, had organized protest vigils in several schools in Ibb Governorate, to denounce their deprivation of financial quotas to be spent on UNICEF aid.