Kwara teachers ask Gov Abdulrazaq to offset N37.2m unpaid salary

TEACHERS in Kwara State have appealed to Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq to offset N37, 251, 052:19 outstanding salary of their colleagues serving in the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB).

Speaking with Tribune Online in Ilorin at the weekend, the state chairman of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), Comrade Saliu Toyin, said that the unpaid salary of SUBEB teachers run to three months 58 per cent.

The NUT chairman, who said that SUBEB teachers had been collecting salary in percentage before this new administration, added that present administration had been paying full salary.

“SUBEB teachers were last promoted in 2016. TESCOM teachers were last promoted in 2015. The TESCOM teachers that were promoted in 2015, 2016, and 2017 only received promotion letters without cash back up. With this, you don’t even know your nomenclature. We want to present administration to address all these.

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“The government is new, we know, but time is running fast. We’ve met with the governor and he appreciates teachers, promising to meet our yearnings,” he said.

The NUT chairman, who lamented lopsidedness in the distribution of teachers in the rural areas of the state, called on the state government to recruit more teachers and redistribute existing ones to ensure even placement of teachers in both rural and urban schools of the state.

“There’s an influx of teachers in the urban areas, while there’s none in the villages. It’s after distribution of teachers that one will know the actual number of teachers needed in our schools. But sincerely speaking, we need more teachers to handle core and technical subjects,” he said.

He also appealed to the state government on infrastructure development, training and retraining of teachers, saying that teachers in the state were last trained about 20 years ago.

“Training of teachers is necessary to improve their skills and competence. It’s no longer an era of teachers know it all. This is an era where you see your pupils goggle on what you teach them, particularly, on aspects where they think you didn’t teach well. They tell you the correct answer. It means that teachers need to upgrade themselves to be in line with the demands of the present situation and standard of education in the global world,” he said.

While he said the government had promised to look into the issue as well as the welfare of the teachers, Comrade Saliu asked the government to commence implementation on the issue without delay to ensure quality education in all parts of the state.

The teachers, who appreciated the governor for appointing two of them as commissioners, said that the appointment attested to the belief of the present administration in the capability of teachers at complementing government on development.