By Crispina Cummings
Parliamentary Oversight Committee on Labour yesterday summoned Njala University, Sierra Leone Labour Congress and artisans union to clarify the issue of 98 redundant workers who have still not been paid their benefits.
Secretary General of the Artisans Public Works Services Union, Alhaji Tejan Kassim, said the former workers of the Bo Teachers' College and later Njala University were yet to receive their benefit after over nine years.
Quoting the Education Act of 2005, Vice Chancellor and Principal of the Njala University, Professor Abu Sesay, said they were only responsible for Njala and not Bo Teachers' College.
He said he was not around when the 98 workers were absorbed into the workforce at the university, but that he learnt about it in the handing over notes he met, adding that the senior workers were paid to the tune of Le 500 million. On the 98 junior workers, he said there was nothing they could do.
On behalf of the Sierra Leone Labour Congress, their vice president Jennings Wright said that in 2012 the ministries of education and finance, Njala and Artisans' Union had a meeting during which the finance agreed to pay the workers if they were provided a letter with a list of names to the effect. The ministry said that that hadn’t been done yet.
A member of the parliamentary committee, Jusufu Mansaray, MP, said it appeared the ministry of education did not want to help the redundant workers because the finance ministry had opted to make the payments.
Chairman of the committee, Francis Konowa, MP, said they’d decided that the issue was very serious and should be treated as such. He said a meeting would be held tomorrow Friday so that it could be dealt with once and for all.
(C) Politico 05/06/14
