By Nathan Eyagu
SOROTI CITY
This website has reliably learnt that Soroti City Secondary School teachers have today, 3rd November, 2022 started receiving salary arrears payments after storming the City offices yesterday, 2nd November, 2022.
Those this reporter spoke to also say the system was paying a few of their colleagues while leaving out majority of them.
The pressure (Wednesday 2nd November, 2022)
“It’s becoming a routine for the city teachers to be delayed to be paid, I wish transfer was open, I would have opted to transfer myself to other places where salary is paid early, timely communication to the teachers to alert us on how the system is working is needed,”, an angry teacher said.
Juliet Akurut one of the secondary school teachers explained that she has borrowed a lot of money from different people and she can no longer do it yet she has a lot of responsibilities like paying school fees and others.
The angry teachers later had a private meeting with different city representatives at the city hall who urged them to be patient till they receive their salaries.
The Soroti City Clerk, Kaweesi John requested the angry teachers to wait till Thursday (today) and Friday and observe the situation while assuring them that the processing of their payment has been done. (This indeed has been done-ED.)
Ipagi Juliet, the Deputy City Mayor Soroti City confirmed that for three months, the secondary teachers hadn’t got salary saying it’s not the city that handles the payment of the teachers but rather the central.
Betty Alaso the secretary education and representative of workers in the council said that most of the secondary school teachers in the city are affected and if it continues, the action taking place will affect learners as there is a planned strike which will affect their performance.
“Salary enhancement for nurses and science teachers has affected the wage according to the info that I got, money is there but the system is slow, before end of this month, all people should have been paid the arrears and October salary, government is committed to enhancing the salaries of arts teachers in the country, calm down and wait for the money to come into the accounts,” Peter PEX Paak the RCC Soroti city said.
“We had a meeting with the town clerk and have some hopes, we agreed in the meeting that incase our issue is not addressed, we shall send our leaders here and we give them until Friday for teachers to have their salaries,” Francis Elianu a teacher from St. Mary’s Madera who led the team said.
