At least 400 teachers from different payams of Jur River County in Western Bahr el Ghazal State have since Monday been gathering at the premises of the state education ministry demanding their July salaries arrears.
The teachers said they have not been paid despite the Christmas festive season being imminent and claimed they were called by the administration of their line ministry to come for their pay.
Several of the teachers told Radio Tamazuj that the education ministry officials turned around and told them to go back home without being paid.
Santo Mawien Majok, who spoke on behalf of the teachers, said all of them who traveled from far away payams did not receive any money and cannot return home due to lack of transport fare.
“We are now at the state ministry of education with the team to see the way forward on how we can be paid because the committee is planning to go to Jur River County payams while some of the teachers have spent a lot of time here without getting anything (money),” Mawien explained. “The issue of transport is now affecting us in terms of coming and going back.”
He said that schools are not operating well because all the teachers are in town apart from volunteers who they left behind to manage the schools.
“My message to the government is that next time if there is such a committee, they should be taken to the grass-root level so that teachers will not come from their various places to the headquarter in order to avoid such inconveniences,” Mawein added.
Meanwhile, the chairperson of the committee, Ejudio Arkangelo Safu, who doubles as the state education minister, said his committee is supposed to pay the teachers’ salaries in each Payams of Jur River County and not in the town.
“First of all, the committee was formed to do the payments at these locations and we are supposed to go to Jur River County because that is where they work, not in the town,” Minister Safu said. “When we got the money, we decided to pay the teachers who were here, but somebody around here started calling people in.”
He added that those who are now in town will be paid but those in the payams should wait there.
The minister denied that they called teachers to receive their salaries at the headquarters.
“We saw these groups coming on Saturday and we do not know who called them. We have informed the commissioner to tell them to stay in their payams and bomas, in particular, the locations we mentioned are Udici, Kangi, Nyinakok, Kuajeina, and Mbili,” Minister Safu said. “They should group in those areas and the committee will pay them there instead of coming to the town and disrupting others.”
Last week, the state ministry of finance, formed a committee to process the payment of July 2021 salary arrears to all government workers only after verifying them physically in order to weed out ghost employees.