By Ben Adoga
Public primary school children in the FCT will stay at home indefinitely arising from a strike action which teachers declared Wednesday.
This will be the fate of students in the nation’s capital as the Nigerian Union of Teachers, NUT, Abuja chapter chairman, Comrade Stephen Knabayi in a press briefing maintained that they will not call off the strike until they get their alert, meaning their salaries.
Children in public primary schools were sent home Wednesday as the teachers said they have not been paid.
However, the FCT Administration in a quick reaction said they were not owing teachers’ salaries and that all disbursements from the Joint Accounts Allocation Committee, JAAC have been transparent and prompt.
Executive Secretary, FCT Universal Basic Education, Dr. Alhassan Sule explained that the strike was caused by the nonpayment of arrears of promotion allowances which had accumulated since 2015.
Dr. Sule, who made this known in a press briefing said they were surprised to receive a letter from the NUT secretariat with the information that they gave a directive to all teachers in the primary sector not to resume on Wednesday.
He said that the FCT administration has been doing its best for FCT teachers, that in December all teachers that are under the payroll of the FCT administration were paid, that they are not owing to any teacher salary.
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Sule stressed that as well as FCT teachers’ welfare is concerned, the FCT administration does not play with it. “They have paid all salaries.”
FCT NUT chairman, Comrade Stephen Knabayi, also explained that as far as NUT is concerned, the payment of teachers’ salaries in LEA schools, FCT has been prompt and regular. We do not have any issue with that as far as NUT is concerned.
‘Currently, we have directed that schools should be shut down in the six area councils with effect from today, Wednesday. That has to do with the outstanding arrears and the none payment of the arrears of the new national minimum wage, and some months of annual increment in some LEAs,” he said.
