FCT council chairmen playing with teachers’ arrears – NUT

The Chairman of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) in the FCT, Comrade Stephen Knabayi, has said despite allocations coming into the coffers of the area councils, their chairmen still lack the will to pay teachers’ promotion arrears.

City News had reported that the union at the end of its emergency standing committee meeting two weeks ago issued an ultimatum to the six area council chairmen to pay the backlog of teachers’ promotion arrears or face industrial action.

Knabayi, while speaking with newsmen in Abuja on Wednesday, said based on their investigation, they were convinced that the area councils had the capacity to pay the promotion arrears.

“For us as a union, we believe their monthly allocations, to a large extent, can pay these arrears, but they are just playing with it.

“So we do not believe in the first instance that lack of funds is hindering solutions to these problems,” he stated.

He, therefore, said there was the need for the chairmen to find ways of paying the teachers’ arrears in their respective councils because such payment had commenced at the FCTA level.