Members of the Academic Staff Association of the Bonthe Technical College, which became an affiliate of Njala University after the University Act of 2004, have threatened to go on a peaceful stay-away strike action if the government fails to address their “perennial plights.”
A letter dated June 15, 2012 and signed by the BONTICO academic staff president, Thomas Tucker and secretary general John Fofanah, was sent to the minister of education, Dr Minkailu Bah, cataloguing their twelve-point concerns and calling for immediate actions by authorities. “We wish to refer you to the above subject matter, Sir, and to hereby register a very strong complaint over the manner and way in which we at BONTECH are always mistreated and marginalised, the most recent being government’s failure to pay our miserable sort of salaries for almost six months now,” the letter states. The lecturers claim they have gone for almost three years without a Principal, a substantive Registrar, Bursar or Finance Officer, meaning there is no functional administrative organogram to prove the required leadership for the tertiary institution. A college council recently appointed is yet to assume any responsibility. Also among concerns raised are the nonexistence of a salary grading system which they allege undermines merit; the nonexistence of any defined conditions of service; poor working facilities and incentives. “Sir, in light of the forgoing, and if truly His Excellency the President’s Agenda for Change should be something to write home about, then it’s therefore high time we stopped dressing people in borrowed garments,” they warn. Speaking to Politico the President of the academic staff Thomas Tucker, said they would not conduct end-of-year exams, which are to take place on 25 June. No official of the ministry of education could be reached as at press time last night
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