Over 7,000 teachers in public primary and junior secondary schools in Kogi state have appealed to the state governor, Yahaya Bello, to look into the issue of non-payment of their salaries for the past 8 to 39 months.
The appeal was contained in a communiqué issued at the end an emergency meeting of the Basic Education Staff Association of Nigeria (BASAN) held in Lokoja on Monday.
The association traced the teachers’ predicaments to the staff screening exercise the government embarked upon since 2016, lamenting that the affected teachers had been going through hardships.
The communiqué signed by Mr Onotu Yahaya and Mr Mohammed Sule, Acting Chairman and Secretary of the Kogi State chapter of BASAN, respectively, also bemoaned the alleged refusal of the state government to fully implement the N18,000 minimum wage to teachers in the basic education sector.
Onotu and Sule stated that their counterparts in the Senior Secondary School cadre and other state government staff had started enjoying the N18,000 minimum wage since Dec. 2011, wondering why teaching and non-teaching staff at the basic education sector were not being fully paid.
The communiqué urged the government to put a stop to the payment of 35 -50 percent salary to its members, insisting that they deserve full payment of salary like other workers in the state.
“Several of the basic education staff retirees are yet to access their monthly pensions besides non-payment of their gratuity,” the statement said.
They expressed worry over what they described as “incessant movement” of payment of their salary among the State Universal Basic Education Board, local government councils and sometimes Consultant, saying that this had mitigating against efforts to ascertain actual staff strength in the sector.
It also raised concern over the poor state of basic education infrastructure in schools across the state, warning that the development was an impediment in meeting the desired productive curriculum delivery.
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