By Sadiq Abubakar
Maiduguri
Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) has donated glasses to 140 teachers with eye problems who underwent free medical treatment that the union sponsored a few months ago.
Its chairman, Alhaji Bulama Abiso, who disclosed this to newsmen in Maiduguri yesterday, said 14 among them were to undergo eye surgery, while others were given free eye glasses.
Abiso said the screening was conducted by a team of medical experts under the aegis of Afro Eye Foundation, a non-governmental organisation (NGO).
He said the gesture was necessary to uplift the health status of teachers who remained the core centre and heart of all foundation of the educational process.
According to him, same gesture would also be replicated to other teachers across the 27 local government areas of the state as peace gradually returns in their LGs with the liberation efforts of the military.
He said: “Teachers welfare has remained the core priority of this Union; that is why we are doing what we can to uplift their living standard. The union had procured about 187 plot of land which was distributed to our members as soft loans.
“We are equally working out modalities with the Federal Mortgage Bank to construct two blocks of about 300 houses to our teachers to address their accommodation problems. The houses would be given to them as revolving loans which is to be in 25 years.
Continuing, he said: “More arrangement is made so that even if our teachers resigned they will still continue paying the loans to enable them own the houses at the end of the day.”
Abiso, therefore, called on the 140 teachers to adhere strictly to the use of the eye glasses, drugs prescribed to them.
He implored governments, NGOs, wealthy individuals and other relevant stakeholders to assist ordinary people with eye problems.
