By Kenneth Thompson
A senior teacher at Richard Allen High School, Mary Kposowa, has told Politico that staff had not been paid since July, causing them to stop work and their pupils to go on a protest march in the east end of the city last week.
When contacted on the issue, the Public Relations Officer of the Ministry of Education Brima Turay, denied that his ministry owed any teacher and that those teachers that had not been paid by the ministry were those who had to be verified or were teachers whom “our ministry would technically not recognise as teachers because they have not been hired by the ministry of education, they are those teachers who were employed by heads of schools and principals as a result they are not in our voucher.”
Brima said that since 2006 the Ministry of Education had not been hiring teachers. According to him, “we are only replacing teachers who are deceased or have resigned on request of the head of the school to fill such vacancy”. He stressed that after two verification exercises, they were yet to collate the final list to know the number of certified teachers the ministry had so far.
He however said that they were anticipating a significant reduction in the 7,400 uncertified teachers to “a more moderate rate...some teachers were negligent with the verification process that is why they we are having such a high number of troubled teachers”.
The PRO said the problems were "currently on the minister’s desk and pretty soon the matter would be resolved”.
In relation to the protest action carried out by the pupils of Richard Allen, Brima said “we cannot just delve into the issue, we need to get complaints from principals that certain teachers are not teaching forcing pupils to take to the street to protest, and then we will take appropriate action".
Politico gathered that the pupils were on their way to State House when they were stopped by the police.
However as we went to press last night, some teachers of the school told us that their salaries had now been paid in full on Monday.
(C) Politico 22/10/13
