Dozens of itinerant public school teachers gathered outside the Education Ministry on Wednesday, demanding to be assigned to schools in their home governorates in protest of the burdensome transport fees and long commutes they face.

Approximately 1,500 teachers currently travel to work in distant governorates to compensate for staffing shortfalls and unmet vacancies, according to Abdallah Saber, the coordinator of the Ragaona Kollena (Return Us All) campaign, which organized the demonstration. Saber told Mada Masr that many teachers have spent the past two years working in schools far from their homes under the parameters set forth in ministerial decree 202/2013.

Saber and another teacher were allowed to enter the Education Ministry to present their grievances to government officials, who assured them that they would be reassigned to public schools in their home governorates at the conclusion of the academic year. However, Education Minister Al-Helaly al-Sherbiny did not meet with the teachers.

“We were told that the ministry is working to fill vacancies in public schools from among the ranks of teachers who are based in these governorates, so as to avoid the problem that we are currently faced with,” Saber said, adding that he was told that teaching posts would be determined according to geographic location, school vacancies, and candidates’ qualifications.

While a law issued in July, 2016 stipulated that women working as teachers and assistant teachers in public schools are to be employed in their home governorates, men continue to be assigned to posts in distant governorates.

“Teachers have to pay a great deal for transportation, rent, food, drink, along with medical bills,” said Saber, who is married and has three children. “I pay LE1,600 just for transportation fees. So I do not have money for myself at the end of the month to pay for anything else, let alone to provide for my family. Every month, I have to borrow money from my father in order to make ends meet,”

Itinerant teachers are paid LE1,000 per month, according to Saber, a salary below the public sector’s national minimum wage of LE1,200. The Education Ministry supplements this salary with LE40 per month, purportedly to cover travel costs.

Although he lives in Cairo, Saber has been assigned to work in a village in the Nile Delta governorate of Kafr al-Sheikh. He makes an eight-hour round trip commute six days a week.

“Due to tight seating on buses and other vehicles, I am forced to bend my knees in close, and thus I suffer from pain in my joints,” Saber said. The condition has forced him to spend a portion of his salary on doctor visits and related medical expenses.

There are other teachers whose places of residence and work are so far apart that they only travel home during long holidays, according to Saber.

The teachers that gathered outside the ministry on Wednesday also chanted slogans of remembrance for Hany Khamis, a teacher who died while commuting to work late last year.

Khamis, who lived in the Nile Delta governorate of Monufiya but was teaching at a school in Cairo, died when he fell from a train in December while commuting to work. The Ragaona Kollena campaign has blamed Sherbiny for Khamis’s death.