500 teachers protest non-payment of salaries in Cross River

More than 500 science teachers in Cross River State on Wednesday blocked the state Governor’s Office with mats and wrappers to protest the alleged removal of their names from the state payroll.

They also raised the alarm over non-payment of their salaries for September and October, adding that they have turned to beggars and doing odd jobs in a bid to survive.

Speaking with journalists, the spokesperson of the teachers, Mr. Kenneth Bisong, said that they (teachers) don’t understand the rationale behind the Ben Ayade-led administration’s decision to stop paying them and the removal of their names from the payroll.

“Initially, we didn’t know that something has happened until our colleagues stared getting paid and our people were not. We went to relevant offices to find out what happened. We discovered that our names had been removed from the payroll by the state government.

“Our names were removed from the payroll in September, we started work since 2015, but we were paroled in January 2016. We are about 500 teachers affected and it could be more.

“Government didn’t follow the service rules. We don’t know what the government wants to achieve by removing our names from the payroll and treating us unjustly.

“We are the live-wire of secondary schools; we are the soul of our younger ones, tomorrow’s leaders.

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Does the government intend to engage quacks? All we want is the payment of our September and October salary arrears.”

When contacted, Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to Governor Ayade, Mr. Christian Ita, said it was just an audit by the government, adding that no one had been sacked.

“Nobody has been sacked, it was just an audit,” he stated.

He said that a lot of people who joined the civil service in 2015 did so through the back door, assuring the teachers that there is need for alarm.

Ita added: “The governor is doing a cleansing of the state payroll in other to delete ghost workers.

“Nobody has sacked them. The government has realized that because approval was given for employment in some areas, the people in charge resorted to over- employment.

“In some cases, over 200 persons were approved for employment, the people saddled with the responsibility recruited 700 staff.

So, nobody has been sacked. “Those whose employments are genuine have been given letters for re-validation of their employment. This means that those that were genuinely employed are to be restored back to the payroll.”

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