TEACHERS
in Delta State, under the aegis of Nigeria Union of Teachers, NUT, yesterday,
besieged the State Government House and the state House of Assembly
complex, urging
the state government to take over the payment of primary school teachers’
salaries. Saying that they were not against the autonomy of local governments,
the teachers said, that the only way to save the primary education from
collapse was to remove their salaries from local government. Chairman of NUT in
the state, Mr Jonathan Jemirieyigbe, who led the rally decried that primary
school teachers in some States including Delta were being owed salaries.
Lamenting that the development would not only affects the survival of primary
school teachers, Jemirieyigbe said it portends great danger for the future of
unprivileged children in the country.
Reiterating that they were not against
the autonomy of local government, he said that they may scrap the State Joint Local Government
Account which according to him, may take primary education back to the dark
pre-1994 era. Addressing the teachers, acting governor of the state, Mr.
Kingsley Otuaro, insisted that the payment of primary school teachers salaries
was the responsibility of the local government, based on the constitutional
mandate of the different tiers of government. Otuaro who spoke through the
Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education,
According to Vanguard, Mr. Chiedu Ebie, said that the
management of primary and secondary education has been the function of the
state government, adding that the state government has been augmenting salaries
of primary school teachers even when it was not its duty to do so. He said that
government has not failed to pay the state workers salaries because it was its
statutory role, adding that any insinuation that government was owing primary
school teachers was not correct. Addressing the teachers at the state Assembly
Complex, where the Speaker, Mr Sheriff Oborevwori said that the Senator Ifeanyi Okowa’s
administration was aware of their plights.
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