Salaries: CEPO offers to help teachers ‘get justice’ in court
A civil society activist has urged teachers to take legal action against any state governor who fails to implement the ministry of general education and instruction’s recent order on the new salary scale.
The Executive Director of Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO), Edmund Yakani, stated that his organisation would provide advocates to assist teachers in pursuing their rights.
Mr. Yakani said some governors have been keeping silent on the ongoing strike by teachers in some states, demanding for 100 per cent salary increment, despite the national government’s availing the education conditional funds.
“Teachers, if the dialogue or negotiation never produced your intended results, then use the second option of seeking legal means for clarification. We hope that our judiciary authorities will cooperate with you, teachers,’’ he noted in a statement.
“In the event, that our judiciary at the state level is not cooperating with you, then seek the national judiciary instrument of the supreme court of law. If all national legal instruments are not cooperating with you, then seek regional instruments such as the East Africa Court of Justice,” said Yakani.
On Friday last week, the Minister of General Education and Instruction, Awut Deng Achuil, accused some state governors of misappropriating education condition transfers for paying teachers’ salaries and running schools.
She made the statement after teachers in Central Equatoria and the Jonglei states lay down their tools demanding the implementation of President Salva Kiir’s 100 salaries rise including allowances.
“We are reliably informed that some state governors do divert these funds for other use, which contravene the conditions within which the funds are transferred,” Awut said.
“Those states that paid teachers only basic salaries without allowances must pay in full the basic plus allowances because it comes as a package with inclusive allowances,” she said last Friday.
She then ordered all the state governors and area administrators to ensure implementation of the 100 per cent new salary scale because ‘‘that was their right and no one should rob them’’.
Mr. Yakani stressed: “The information provided by Hon. Minister of General Education and Instruments provides enough basis for legal augment on the right use of the conditional transfer for general education at the state level.”
According to the Director-General of Human Resources in the Ministry of Labour and Public Service, Darius Okeny, the new pay scale of all employees from grades 1 to 17 encompasses all the packages that belong to a particular pay scale of each individual’s grade, but some institutions deliberately omitted some columns.
Early Dr. Andruga Mabe, the Central Equatoria State Minister of Information, confirmed the omission of the nature of the work column but said it was done according to the allocation by the national government.
“We started by doubling the existing salary, but we did not implement that part, which is ‘nature of the work’ according to what we have in our budget scale,” Dr. Mabe told The City Review early this month.
