Northern Bahr-el-Ghazal State Teachers to Receive Salaries Following Minister’s Directive
The National Minister of General Education and Instruction, Awut Deng Achuil, has taken action to ensure that teachers in Northern Bahr-el-Ghazal State receive their salaries. The Minister formed a committee on Friday to oversee the disbursement of payments in line with the new national salary scale, which includes a 400% increase in civil servants’ payments.
During her three-day visit to Aweil, Minister Awut vowed to address issues such as ghost names, absenteeism, and the presence of active politicians on the Ministry of Education’s payrolls.
“There are people who would want to politicize education, education is free from politics,” said Minister Achuil.
“The resources that the government of South Sudan gets to pay teachers is exclusively for the teachers and not the teachers who are not in the class, we are going to handle that immediately. I want to have a clean payroll.”
In response to the Minister’s directives, State Governor Tong Akeen Ngor pledged to implement the measures promptly.
“Those working with organizations, for sure we shall remove them from the payrolls,” said Governor Ngor.
“We shall carry out general tests for all teachers in the state and those who will pass will be the real teachers in the state. We need few teachers who are productive because we need quality education.”
This development comes after last month’s protests by teachers in Northern Bhar-el-Ghazal State over what they described as an illegal reduction of their salaries by the administration, which led to the arrest of 300 teachers.