TASCE workers lament over N1.5bn unpaid salaries

WORKERS (academic and non-academic) of the Tai Solarin College of Education, Omu-Ijebu, Ogun State, have appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to intervene and facilitate the payment of arrears of salaries owed staff of the institution by the Ogun State government totaling N1,459,162,815.23.

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In a ‘save our soul’ letter to the president dated November 28, 2018, the workers, under the aegis of the Coalition of TASCE Staff (COTAS), the workers detailed how their travail started with the relocation, in October 2008, of 474 members of staff to Omu-Ijebu, the current site of the college, through a ‘Letter of Disarticulation’.

Tribune Education recalls that the ‘disarticulation’ and relocation of some of the pioneer staff of the college to Omu-Ijebu followed the upgrading of the college to a university of education in 2005.

Since 1998, TASCE had been granted approval by the National Universities Commission to award Bachelor degrees in Education, in affiliation with the University of Ibadan.

When it got approval to operate as a university of education (the first of its kind in Nigeria) in 2005, and the state still wanted to retain a college of education, the staff had to be split, and 474 workers were moved to where the college is now in Omun, while the university (Tai Solarin University of Education) continues to operate from Ijagun, near Ijebu-Ode.

Since that ‘disarticulation’, payment of salaries to the college staff has been in fits and starts, sometimes with the workers going without salaries for 14 months.

Sometimes when they did get paid, they were placed on 50 per cent salary.

The letter reads in part: “After much persuasion and appeals to the government vis-à-vis the appointment of a new provost for the college, the state government resumed the payment of half salary with effect from August 2016 to July, 2017, and October 2017.

“Between August, 2017 to the time of writing this report, the percentage of monthly salary paid to workers in the college was increased to 60 per cent (September, 2017 to September, 2018).

“Your Excellency Sir, in July 2012, a new salary structure which was approved in 2009 for colleges of education was implemented in the college with the outstanding arrears of same being 48 months.

“The state government is yet to look into the payment of this backlog despite series of appeals.”

According to COTAS, the unpaid salaries have had serious adverse effects on workers, including emotional distress, abandonment of academic/professional programmes, and death.

According to the letter, between May 2011 and October 2018, 45 members of staff have died due to inability to pay medical bills in hospital; while several others have had to nurse terminal ailments.

“It is more devastating to note that we have husbands and wives working together in the college and are being subjected to this high level of dehumanization,” the letter states further.

The workers also bemoaned alleged lukewarm attitude of the state government which always at every opportunity denies owing staff salaries.

Worst still, COTAS says, the only organs that could have helped workers to fight for their rights, the staff unions, “have been suspended by the state government since July 2015, through executive fiat.”

It, therefore, appealed to President Buhari to help influence Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State to restore workers’ salary to 100 per cent with effect from October, 2018; pay all outstanding salaries and arrears, and constitute and inaugurate a governing council for the college, as it has had none since its relocation to Omu-Ijebu in October, 2008.