Mali Closes Educational Institutions and Higher Education Centers as Jihadist Restrictions Worsens Petrol Emergency
The landlocked West African country has suspended schools and higher learning institutions countrywide due to a critical fuel scarcity resulting from a restriction on fuel imports enforced by Islamist insurgents.
Top education official announced on national broadcast that all education institutions would remain closed until 9 November, clarifying that the transportation of staff and pupils had been impacted by the blockade.
He asserted that the government officials were “making every effort” to resolve the situation so that classes could restart on 10 November.
For several weeks, the nation has been grappling with a energy deficit, particularly in the main city, after militants from an al-Qaeda-linked organization imposed a blockade by targeting fuel trucks on major highways.
The country is without coastal access, so all energy resources are transported by truck from adjacent nations such as Senegal and Ivory Coast.
Lengthy waits have been forming around gas pumps in Bamako in recent weeks, and the city's normally bustling streets have now allegedly become deserted.
The military government had in recent days assured residents that it was only a temporary issue, but the crisis has endured.
Last week, the American diplomatic mission in the capital stated that non-essential diplomatic staff and their dependents would leave the country amid the intensifying fuel shortage and increasing protection worries.
It said that the energy interruptions had affected the supply of electricity and had the “potential to disrupt” the overall security situation in unforeseen manners.
The West African nation is presently governed by a armed forces administration headed by the military leader, who assumed authority in a takeover in recently.
The military government had popular support when it took power, promising to deal with the protracted safety emergency triggered by a independence uprising in the northern region by the Tuareg population, which was then taken over by extremist groups.
The United Nations stabilization force and European soldiers had been deployed in previously to address the escalating insurgency.
These forces have left since the military assumed power, and the ruling council has hired private military contractors to address the insecurity.
However, the jihadist insurgency has endured and extensive regions of the north and east of the nation remain outside government control.
