By Mabinty M Kamara
The Ministry of Education has said government has agreed to meet, by the first week of July, “all the demands” of striking lecturers of polytechnics and teacher training colleges, but they will have none of it.
The lecturers of Milton Margai College of Education and Technology, Freetown Teachers’ College (FTC), Northern Polytechnic, Eastern polytechnic and Port Loko Teachers’ College, have entered the second week of their indefinite industrial action over a 50% pay rise effective January this year which they say government had agreed to but reneged on.
They accuse the government of brinkmanship saying they had constantly neglected their demands for over nine years.
According to Mohamed Shaw, vice president of the striking institutions and President of the FTC senior staff association, thousands of students are affected by their action with examinations having been put off indefinitely.
“On 8 March this year we called off our strike over a long-running review of our pay and conditions, after receiving what are now false assurances from the minister of education that our grievances would be addressed,” Shaw told Politico. He said they no longer trusted the minister and would go on with their strike action until “all our demands are met and all monies owed us from January are fully paid”.
But the Education ministry, through its Public Relations Officer, said the government had negotiated with the lecturers that they were going to meet those demands made by them. But being that their demands came at the time when the national budgets had been allocated they had to source money from elsewhere.
“But bear in mind that this was the time when the national budget was closed so what was going to happen would be sourcing out extra budgetary allocations for meeting that commitment which wasn’t factored in the national budget,” Brima Michael Turay, who is also deputy director of school broadcasting, told journalists at the weekly government press briefing last Thursday.
He said government now had to find other ways of sourcing for the money to meet that commitment. “So that was what created some kind of a delay along the line because if something is not factored in the national budget and you have to get it somewhere else, it will take time,” he said.
Turay urged the striking lecturers to pursue dialogue as they had always done as a means of getting out of the apparent impasse.
He said they had called them to a meeting but they refused to show up, with only the principals attending.
He therefore said that they are again inviting them to a meeting “to share the good news with them”. The good news being that all their demands will be met and delivered on in the first week of July.
“We have invited them for a meeting tomorrow…If I were them, that would be a meeting that I definitely would want to attend but to them that’s not the case,” he lamented.
The lecturers say they are sticking to their guns saying all they are interested in is the payment of their negotiated salary and not promises about such.
(C) Politico 28/06/16
