The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) Muhammad Musa Bello has begged the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) to allow screening of all Local Education Authority (L.E.A) teachers across the territory before the commencement of the minimum wage and payment of arrears.
Bello, represented by the FCTA director of human resources Mohammed Bashar at the meeting of the State Wing Executive Committee (SWEC) of the FCT NUT at the conference hall of the Government Girls Secondary School (GGSS) Dukpa, Gwagwalada area council on Saturday.
The meeting also had the acting director of the FCT UBEB, Dr Hassan Sule, FCT ALGON chairman, Alhaji Adamu Mustapha and some directors of the education secretariat, took over five hours to pacify the union to accept the screening exercise.
The minister said screening of the teachers would enable the administration and area councils to know the total amount involved and the teachers that were legally recruited within the period.
Chairman of the FCT wing of the NUT Comrade Stephen Knabayi while speaking during the meeting expressed his displeasure with the area council chairmen for reneging on the agreement reached to commence the implementation of the minimum as from February 1, 2021.
He said it was unfortunate that after 22 months the implementation of teachers’ minimum wage was yet to commence without any word from the six area council chairmen.
“As it is now, the FCT administration came up with an appeal to allow them do the verification of the L.E.A teachers in order to come up with authentic list of teachers, which we had to accept the submission to allow the verification,” he said.
Continuing, he said, “we have discussed and agreed that for now, we will suspend our strike action, as immediately after the screening, we will come up with next line of action.”