A Yoruba Youth Group, Alliance of Yoruba Youth Council Worldwide (AYYCW), has condemned the silence of the government at both state and Federal level towards the predicament of private school teachers.
This was disclosed in a press statement signed by the National Publicity Secretary of the group, Oladipo Gbeminiyi, and made available to Tribune Online on Saturday.
According to the group, private school teachers in the country should be one of the beneficiaries of the palliatives given by the government to some citizens to serve as succour for them during this pandemic period.
The statement reads: “It saddens that private school teachers are not one of the beneficiaries of the government palliative programme while the government officials take home millions and billions of Naira as Covid-19 palliative, and the common man left at the mercy of poverty.”
It noted that private school teachers, who make up the larger chunk of the teaching force of the Nation, are crying in silence as they suffer untold hardship.
It was further stated that encounter with some Private School teachers, who lamented their plight, has shown the gravity of what the private school teachers are going through during the lockdown period caused by COVID-19.
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” Most of the private school teachers can’t even feed themselves not to talk of their family, and some of have died out of frustration and inability to resolve medical issues as a result of non-payment of their salaries due to the Covid-19 impact on schools.”
The group, therefore, charged the government as a matter of urgency to look into the plight of these group of people who are mainly youths, to stem a new tide of criminality that is inevitable.
It also condemned the attitude of most school owners for not providing financial support to their teachers considering the fact that they have served the school owners and deserve some level of financial assistance as payback.
The group, however, urged the government to join hands with school owners to give out palliatives to the teachers and some private school owners in order to ease their financial burden.
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