Sierra Leone News: Teachers Deserve Better: Pay Them!

Business

Is it not sad for an ageing man to feel rather sad and seriously concerned about his country? Yes, it becomes crucial when the ageing man is a few years older than his Independent Country. What I don’t get is that in this country instead of correcting age old mistakes, we dive into committing spectacularly negative new ones. After the University Student unions in the 70s and 80s, it was the teachers Union that proved a very strong pressure group that have the temerity to voice and actually challenge the status quo. Even then, the One Party APC government at the time the scheming tactics to draw the heads of the teachers Union into Cabinet likes some others from the army and other walks of like. My brother we have suffered in this country for too long and yet there seems no end in sight. There is some important information that many compatriots do not know is how we had sank so deep long time ago and hit rock bottom. Can you blame our president for often saying that “we are between the rock and the hard place?” Are you still wondering where I am heading. I will tell you. I am seriously perturbed, flabbergasted and even taken aback by the non-payment of teachers’ salaries for reasons not tenable enough for a government that cares about the near moribund state of our education system. Look, we cannot use systemic trappings to impinge on workers livelihoods. Teachers must be paid. Tell me why it is that no matter what you will never hear of salaries delayed for ministers and Members of Parliament. The pride of most workers in Sierra Leone is not perhaps the weight of the pay packet but rather the regularity in which it is paid. We all know how difficult our state actors have made the country by their questionable decisions. The poor miserable seventy- something percent illiterate, ignorant and politically brainwashed look on hopelessly and helplessly while the country drowns to rock bottom. Teachers and students are the most literate sectors of our society and what more they are both qualitatively and quantitatively strong. They say an educated man is easy to rule but difficult to enslave. The Teacher is the only professional that does not pray for the increase of her clients, the pupils. Let us look at the other professions which pray hard to have clients. Number one is Lawyers; they pray for sonkor-sonkor. The Doctor prays for people to get ill. The commercial Driver prays for passengers. The Commercial Sex Worker prays for male nymphomaniacs who have the cash. Traders pray for buyers who they can hoodwink. Technicians, Engineers and mechanics pray for your appliances and machines to break down. Very interestingly it is only the Thief who prays for people to be rich and handle their money carelessly and keep large chunks at home. Life is full of ironies and ambivalences! When I hear teachers crying over the radios for their salaries, I feel that I taught in the golden days of regular salaries, thanks to the United Methodist Church which assisted the Albert Academy to pay teachers on the 27th of each month sharp. I am talking of the 70s and 80s. There are three sets of citizens, whose issues cannot be toiled with, because you touch them, you touch almost everybody else. These are children, Youth and teachers. Never mind the many scandals around schools these days; teachers are by default role models in any society. They should therefore be treated as such. There is a lot of far reaching implications if the teachers’ salaries are not paid especially at this material time when our country’s economy is nose diving to rock bottom. This country has a terrible history of bad timing. The other day slum dwellers were given 90 days to vacate right in the middle of the rainy season, A Vice president was unprecedentedly uprooted from his position right at a time we were still fighting Ebola. As if that was not enough, a Brilliant young and hardworking Mayor was unceremoniously removed from office and even when exonerated, could not be reinstated. We can continue cataloguing! For the teachers, there is every likelihood that results will be delayed by affected over two thousand teachers. If the real reason as given is the non-presentation of necessary banking information, I think some other way could be sought to pay while the process in on. If teachers stay aggrieved on to the time schools reopen, you are likely to have a sit down strike and our kids will of course suffer. We all know September is normally a very hard month, it is still in the rainy season and many expenses are done especially for the reopening of schools. Hmmm, we need to exercise sensitivity and pay the teachers. Already the country is short of almost half of the required qualified teachers. Not paying the teachers now, is simply a risky distraction that will deepen the already sad state of our education sector. We use huge foreign exchange to buy rice for our forces and yet cannot pay our teachers for technical reasons, whose teaching will lead to the quality education we all want our children to have. The President’s December 2015 Address on the occasion of the state Opening of the fourth Session of the Fourth Parliament of the second Republic of Sierra Leone, had this under the education sector: “Mr. speaker, The Education Ministry has completed its recovery plan, and it is now focusing on sustaining this progress and acting on the goals spelt out in its Education sector Plan (ESP) 2014-2018. These include supporting the teaching Service Commission (TSC) to take over teacher management so that it could contribute to improving the quality of teaching and learning in schools…” What makes the teachers’ situation precarious is that in some of the school where the yet to be paid teachers are working, no incentive or loan from the school coffers is given them at the end of the month. In you are reading this, you should thank a teacher. Just as the empowerment of women are critical to child survival, so is the empowerment of the teacher is critical to the education of the child. By Beny Sam Thursday August 11, 2016

Fill the forms below to register

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.