From Yakubu Busari, Jos
Comrade Ayuba Gana
Chairman of the Plateau State Chapter of the Nigeria Union of Teachers ,NUT , Comrade Ayuba Gana has commended organised labour for been able to get some concession from government over two critical issues of hike in electricity and petrol tariffs that prompted strike action.
Speaking to our correspondent in Jos, the state capital on Monday, Gana said the decision of organised labour to suspend the nation wide strike was right giving that what he considered “concrete agreement had been reached with the federal government in resolving the problems associated with hike electricity, pump price of petrol and subsidy removal, which is the suspension of electricity hike for 14 days”
Comrade Gana disclosed that the subsidy removal has not yielded any positive result ,however, in any agitation there is condition attach to it in resolving but the suspension of nation wide strike midnight show we are moving towards resolving it .
According to him, “we have got a percentage of what the Union agitated, particularly with the suspension of hike in electricity tariff and the pledge by government to provide meters, starting with five million households in the country.
He equally disclosed that the state has high quality teachers to kick-start the post lockdown resumption of schools though he lamented that the e-learning materials which the state government introduce for pupils and students during the COVID-19 lockdown was elitist in nature considering the fact most of the students couldn’t afford the necessary gadgets to assessed the lectures online.
He said; “take a look at the village were I came from you can’t received Radio or Television signals but now how will you expect a village child to participate in a live program and secondly there was the issue of internet connection and buying of radio batteries.”
Comrade Ayuba said it was untrue the report that the government recruited quacks as teachers into the teaching professional, stating that the union followed the proper recruitment protocol to ensure that those have with prerequisite qualification were employed.
He said that there was more to it than the government wanted the general public to know because most of public places schools remained shutdown for the fear of pandemic.
