PHOTO: Madam Mary Nyumah, NTAL President
By Charles Gbayor, maorethason1997@gmail.com
PLEEBO, Liberia- The President of the National Teachers Association of Liberia (NTAL) Madam Mary Nyumah has commended the government of Liberia for its plans to recruit and place on payroll 1,700 classroom teachers across the country, she has told the local Voice of Pleebo Radio here.
The Liberian government through the Ministry of Education (MoE) in collaboration with the Civil Service Agency (CSA) has in recent time announced plans of hiring One Thousand, Seven Hundred (1700) teachers to be placed in the classroom to fill in gab created by the retirement of great men and women who have served the system over time.
As part of NTAL’s advocacy intervention according to Madam Nyumah, volunteer teachers will be given first preference in the ongoing recruitment exercise and urged them to reapply as a prerequisite for the MoE’s employment opportunity.
According to the Ministry of Education, the exercise is intended to select the best of qualified teachers who are to prepare the future of Liberia’s young generation.
“This is the first time in a long time we have had this type of opportunity to employ so many teachers due to retirement.”
“A joint team charged with the responsibility to complete this feat has been constituted by the Minister of Education that includes the CSA, and NTAL. Let’s get the best people in our classrooms,!” the Education Ministry writes on its official Facebook page.
Madam Nyumah said though the manner in which members of her institution were retired was not the rightful way, saying that she is overwhelmed with the ongoing payment via mobile money platform of salary arrears for teachers whose salary payment comes to an end after being retired.
Describing retirement as an honor, the NTAL President indicated that government decided to honor those retirees with dignity for their contributions to the academic development of the country, but government’s plans were undermined by the outbreak of COVID-19.
The NTAL official informed pension teachers that “the monies you’re receiving now on your phones are your salaries owed by government and not your pension benefits.”
Madam Nyumah urged Teachers who form part of the current batch of pensioners to engage their county education offices in their various counties to enable them go through the National Social Security and Welfare Corporation, (NASSCORP) procedures so as to get their entitled benefits.
“Make sure to go to your CEO office to process your social security form because there where you will get your whatsoever benefit. It is very important,” she said in the Voice of Pleebo Radio interview recently.
She wants retired teachers be patient as government arranges another payroll to pay them their five months salaries from August to December.
She said negotiations are ongoing between her office and the Ministry of Education to include those teachers whose names were deleted from the payroll for abandonment of classroom and other reasons.
“Well, we want to say a big thank you to the president of the Republic of Liberia, His Excellency Dr. George Weah for approving one million United States dollars to pay private schools teachers,” she concluded.