By Septimus Senessie in Kono
Teachers and pupils of OCTEA’s relocated United Methodist Church Secondary School for Girls at the resettlement camp have threatened to “go slow” if their concerns to use the 50-seater school bus were not addressed.
The pupils have also threatened to “go on the rampage” if the company’s head of community development, Henry Vard, continue to subject their teachers to “public molestation and disgrace.”
The teachers and pupils have accused Vard of being “disrespectful and irrational” in his decision to ask teachers out of a bus meant for their school.
One of the teachers, Komba Bobby Moore, looking livid, alleged that on the 4 October this year he was forcefully asked by Vard to “climb down their own school bus” and remarked that “the bus was not meant for teachers of the school but the pupils.”
Moore described this statement allegedly by Vard as “unfortunate, inhuman and disrespectful.” He further alleged that he was “publicly humiliated and molested” before his own pupils and onlookers who were on the scene. He lamented that their monthly salaries were being spent on transport fares to and from school.
Some of the pupils who spoke to Politico on condition of anonymity, expressed unhappiness recalling that the problem between them and the company started in 2011 after they had relocated the school to a resettlement camp some two miles away from their original school compound now being used for mining activities.
In an emergency meeting organised by the district education office in Kono at the school compound, the deputy director of education in Kono district described the act by the company as “absurd, bad and unfortunate.”
Agnes N’kanku Kamara said she broke down on hearing the teachers saying that they were paying Le 8,000 every day to and from school, adding that they being paid a mere pittance by government as salary.
She further said that the 50-seater bus meant for transporting over 1,600 pupils of the school was too small to carry them on time.
The deputy director said that some pupils were going to school late because of the inadequacy of the bus to handle the growing number of pupils.
She recommended that the company should provide teachers with a minibus or allow them on board the bus for a “peaceful coexistence”. She described the teachers and pupils as the school, imploring that the company treat the affairs of teachers as equally as those of the pupils.
Responding to the allegations against OCTEA mining, the manager of the bus, who doubles as head of the community development of the company expressed dismay.
Henry Vard said the allegations against him by the teachers and pupils were “unfortunate and tantamount to character assassination to the highest degree.’’
He insisted that “we can’t compromise laid down principles governing the use of the bus, especially the one dealing with allowing teachers on board the bus with pupils.”
On the recommendation of the deputy director of education, Vard said: “I want to make this clear that we are not Government of Sierra Leone to be taking care of the responsibilities of citizens. Rather, we are a corporate profit-making company.”
He added: “Don’t forget that we pay to the government of this country all our taxes and charges,” and warned that they were not running a charitable organisation.
© Politico 17/10/13
