The Rivers State Commissioner for Education, Prof Kaniye Ebeku, has urged teachers in the state to first exhaust all avenues of dialogue before considering the proposed strike action.
Ebeku, who made the appeal recently in a meeting with the teachers in Port Harcourt, the state capital, noted that the policy of the present administration was not to owe any staff, hence, the allegation of outstanding salary arrears to teachers would be looked into with a view to addressing the problem
The commissioner told the teachers that, “assuming without considering that any legitimate teacher is being owed salary, we believe that you should not start by going on strike.
“We need to know how this came about because as far as this government is concerned, the policy is not to owe any staff. So, if any staff is being owed salary, there must be something wrong along the line that we will seek to explore and resolve.
“Consequently, we have urged them (teachers) to stop any planned strike action that could disrupt the smooth resumption of students’ upcoming academic session,” Ebeku added.
He used the opportunity to urge parents and guardians to prepare their children and wards for the new date of resumption of schools, which is September 19, 2016.
The Tide recalls that teachers under the auspices of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) had last week, issued a communiqué directing teachers to resume work after the holidays while appealing to government to pay them their outstanding salary arrears, while at the same time, warning that they would embark on strike, if on resumption, they are not given their entitlements.
In the communiqué, the teachers had listed payment of arrears of salaries, implementation of promotions and conduct of outstanding promotion interviews of those who are due as issues to be addressed by the government.
The communiqué was issued at the end of a meeting of the State Wing Executive Council (SWEC) of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), Rivers State wing.

Sogbeba Dokubo