CDHR gives Okowa 7 days to pay teachers’ salary

Worried by the perceived Machiavellian method being applied by the Delta State government to coerce striking teachers back to the classrooms, the Committee for Defence of Human Rights (CDHR), Delta State Chapter, has given seven days ultimatum to the Delta State governor, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa to settle the teachers or face mass protest.

The 7-day-ultimatum, according to CDHR takes effect from Tuesday March 21.

The teachers, from public primary and secondary schools in the state, had, on Monday, embarked on an indefinite strike to press for about nine months salaries they are being owed and other grievances.

Chairman of CDHR, Comrade Kehinde Prince Taiga, handed the ultimatum while speaking to journalists on Tuesday in Warri.

He said if Governor Okowa failed to adhere to the call, the body would mobilise over six million Deltans across the country, including parents, guardians and students of higher institutions to stage a mother-of-all protest.

According to him, CDHR is giving seven days ultimatum to Okowa “to pay all arrears and settle other grievances of the teachers for them to go back to work or face the wrath of the body.”

He noted that the leadership of immediate past Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan, who many are claiming was corrupt, built schools and paid teachers regularly.

“But since the inception of Dr Ifeanyi Okowa’s administration, education has suffered great set back,” Comrade Taiga averred.

“It is not enough to patch roads without taking care of the welfare of teachers as there is no importance attached to roads if the students remain at home and become wayward in life,” he added.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) has described the threat by the Delta State government to invoke the ‘No work, no pay policy’ as a result of its ongoing strike action as “most unfortunate, intimidating and undemocratic.”

As of Tuesday morning, armed policemen in patrol vans were seen moving from one public school to another to keep the peace and guide against preventing pupils and teachers who wanted to comply with the directive of the state government to do so.

However, at a different function in Asaba on Tuesday, Governor Okowa stated that the strike action embarked upon by the teachers in the state was at the instance of a lot of misinformation being bandied around..

“If anybody leading a union or an association, wants to pretend that there is no change in the economy, such person will definitely be deceiving himself or will end up deceiving those that we lead and as leaders.

We owe it a duty to tell the truth in the best of ways to those we lead because it is under that condition will they begin to find ways to adjust their thoughts towards issues of demand and welfare,” he averred.

Senator Okowa, who decried the misinformation by the NUT leaders to their members as a basis for the strike action, explained that primary school teachers were the responsibility of the local government councils.

According to him, the state government was liaising with the councils on how best to handle the payment of salaries to local government workers and the primary school teachers in the best interest of the state.

“There is this misinformation which continues to go out there that the primary school teachers are supposed to be paid by the state government; that is not true, it is a misinformation and when somebody who leads a union rises up to speak in a way that is not right to his people and by lying to them, then I get worried because as far back as the 90s.

I know that when the allocation going to local government councils was moved from 10percent to a little over 20.6percent, the primary school teachers moved to the local government councils and the state allocation which was over 30percent was then reduced to 20percent; but that did not stop us as a state from assisting when there is money to offer assistance,” he said

While emphasising that the state government has fulfilled its entire obligation to the secondary school teachers, Senator Okowa said that government has assisted the local government councils over the years with various sums of money to augment the payment of salaries.