Teachers employed by the government in Greater Pibor Administrative Area’s (GPAA) Pochalla County say they have not been paid their salaries since the end of 2021 following a demand by Pochalla’s Anyuak community for a separate administration.
The county education director, Simon Manir, told Radio Tamazuj over the weekend that the teachers have since been discharging duties without pay and called for the national government to intervene.
“Teachers in Pochalla have been deprived of salaries for 16 months but recently 4 months’ salaries were cleared when the national education minister visited Pochalla,” he said. “Despite the detention of the salaries by the people in Pibor, we managed to convince our teachers to continue teaching the children.”
Manir called for the release of teachers’ salaries.
“All the 18 primary schools plus one secondary with a population of 142 teachers are affected and this is against the right of children to education in South Sudan,” he said. “Now, for the teachers to sustain their lives, we stopped transfers and send them to where their families are. The good thing is that people here are agriculturalists and can cultivate.”
One of the affected teachers, Moro Omot, said they sacrifice to teach to keep children in schools.
“We were not paid from November 2021 to September 2022 and only received salaries for October, November, and December and then January this year after the Education Minister Awut Deng visited Pibor and Pochalla on an inspection mission,” he said. “The national government is aware of this and I hope they will intervene.”
Meanwhile, Akway Gora, the Pochalla County executive director, said all civil servants have not been receiving salaries because they demanded to exit GPAA.
“Before the 100 percent salaries increment, our budget used to be SSP 2.5 million. This sum has not been reaching us since 2021 because the community demanded to leave the GPAA and rejected commissioners appointed in Pibor,” he said. “We raised the concern with a delegation sent by the president to address the issue late last year but nothing has happened. I think they are working on it.”
For his part, Nyabok Ngali, the director general in GPAA’s education ministry, said they are committed to improving the quality of education in the area.
“I sent the teachers five months’ salaries through our coordination office in Juba when there was a delegation that visited there. Up to now, their salaries for March are with us and we are trying to find a way of sending it to them,” he explained. “Honestly, for other months, I think they did not receive because their commissioners have not been able to access the county.”
Efforts to reach the Pochalla County commissioner were futile.