Ekiti teachers protest non-payment of salaries

Some secondary school teachers in Ekiti State on Thursday protested non-payment of their seven months salaries.

The teachers, numbering about 500, who were recruited in September 2018 at the tail end of former Governor Ayodele Fayose’s administration, appealed to Governor Kayode Fayemi to end their plights.

The embattled teachers, who spoke at Ikere Ekiti where they gathered for the protest, lamented that their efforts to get the attention of the government had not been successful, alleging that “no concrete step has been taken to either pay us or dialogue with us.”

Mr Bayo Omoyeni, who spoke on behalf of his colleagues, said “letters were written to the Governor, the wife, the Deputy Governor and some traditional rulers, urging them to intervene and end the untold hardship being experienced by the teachers.”

Omoyeni, who debunked allegations that the affected teachers were politicians, said, “We are youths of Ekiti State seeking employment and were given employment by the previous administration and it is trite that government is a continuum.

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“We went through interview and letters of employment were given to us. Not only that, we were deployed to various schools in the state to work. Up till today, there has been no correspondence with us by the present government. The governor should save us from psychological trauma by meeting with our representatives. Our people are having problems with their landlords in their areas of postings,” he said.

In his reaction, the Commissioner for Education, Mr Foluso Daramola, said government was concerned by the plight of this category of teachers, saying that the committee set up to look into the circumstances of their employment had almost concluded their work.

Daramola said, “The government is concerned about their plight in the sense that they are equally Ekiti indigenes. Ordinarily, if this government does not have human face, such last-minute employment would have been ignored.

“But the governor said these people are his people. So everything must be done on its own merit. That is why they set up a high powered committee headed by the Deputy Governor,” the commissioner said.