By Mabinty M. Kamara
National Social Security and Insurance Trust (NASSIT) in collaboration with Sierra Leone Teachers Union (SLTU) has on Thursday 20th May, 2021 launched a nationwide engagement with teachers in a bid to ensure that their personal details are cleaned up, consistent with NASSIT.
The nationwide engagement which according to officials of NASSIT started last year with the Military and later the Police is significant for teachers to deepen their knowledge on the processes and procedures of NASSIT as well as address the mismatched information with the institution.
Speaking at the launch held at the Hotel 5/10 in Freetown, NASSIT Director General, Mohamed Fuad Daboh said the approach to sensitize teachers cannot be under estimated despite the knowledge base of the contributors since the generic sensitization have not been much helpful to their efforts.
“It is important for us to have a sectorial sensitization, the reason being, the sectors have generic problems in terms of their membership with the scheme but there are also specific sectorial problems and that is why we decided to disaggregate the engagement to have you at separate sectors as we did with the military, police,” he said.
Highlighting the challenges faced with the teaching service, Daboh noted gaps in members’ contributions, problems of employee validations of past services, pin codes mismatch, multiple pin codes, inconsistent dates of births; multiple social security numbers, among others.
Speaking at the event, Sorie I. Turay, Chief Education Secretary at TSC who doubles as the chairman of the event said that the teaching service is 100% literate but that it was full of challenges including fake records and documentation which is why he said they were partnering with NASSIT to ensure that they clean up the system.
He therefore entreated the teachers to take advantage of the process to update their records, noting that it is only genuine records that will be updated.
“As a commission, we have challenges with names, challenges with dates of birth, challenges with results, if I should give you the list of them I will spend the next hour. The data is a challenge. We have a workforce that is 100% literate but unfortunately, we have challenge of people using fake document and deliberately try to beat the system to get their way out so this is the challenge we have. And we hope that this exercise would attempt to clean our records,” he said.
In his key note address, the Minister of Labour and Social security, Alpha Timbo said that the teaching service has over the years experienced much transformation.
He noted that when he was the Secretary General of the Teachers Union in 1990s, the membership of the union was 18,543 teachers at the time he left and that as of recent, the union has an enrolment of 35,125, teachers according to the TSC.
He encouraged the teachers to make good use of the opportunity to avoid the situation of the many challenges faced at the time of retirement.
Speaking at the event, the President of the Sierra Leone Teachers Union (SLTU) Mohamed Sallieu Bangura, applauded the government’s efforts in ensuring that the matters related to teachers welfare are considered important, but said that there was need for more to be done due to the economic trends of the country.
“We thank his Excellency for giving us the 30% increment but sir, with the rise in cost of living, we are still looking forward for more improvement in the salaries and conditions of service of teachers in this country,” he said in a statement partly directed at President Julius Maada Bio.
Speaking on behalf of the Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education, Joseph Lamin who is the Free Quality Education Programme Officer said to ensure the quality aspect of the programme, government has recruited several qualified teachers to add to the teaching force.
“It is true that the success of the Free Quality School Education program lies in the hands of the teachers who provide the quality aspect of the programme and these teachers are today here. Therefore, we want you to know that we cannot change the narrative of education in this country if you the teachers are not part of the process. Government is very much aware of the role of teachers and that is why we are working assiduously in ensuring more teachers get their pin codes and are put on the accountant general’s payroll,” he said.
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