The Academic staff of Emmanuel Alayande College of Education (EACOED), Oyo, have appealed to Gov. Abiola Ajimobi to pay their outstanding nine months salaries.
The members, under the aegis of College of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU), made the appeal on Tuesday in Oyo town during a protest over their unpaid salaries.
According to reports, the workers, who wore black clothes, carried out a peaceful protest march from the school’s premises to Oroki junction while wielding placards bearing various inscriptions.
Some of the inscriptions read: “25 percent subvention is obnoxious”, “COEASU demands immediate release of fact finding committee report” and “This suffering is too much, please pay our outstanding salaries”.
The COEASU Chairman in the college, Mr Samuel Oyewunmi, told newsmen that the protest was to appeal to the governor to pay their nine months outstanding salaries.
He said that the union had lost many of its members while many were now sick because of the hardship inflicted on them due to the non-payment of salaries.
“We hardly can say that we have received two months salaries this year. We have made several overtures to the state government and had been turned down. Our congress has already issued a 21-day ultimatum to the state government over the issue.
“We thank the governor for sending a fact-finding panel to the institution but we are waiting for the report to be published,” he said.
Oyewunmi also bemoaned the reduction of the subvention given to the institution to 25 percent, saying the school was rendering social services and was not comparable to polytechnics and universities.
“This college renders social services. We train teachers here and cannot be self-sustaining as other institutions,’’ he said.
Mr Nathaniel Adegbite, a member of the union, said that the protesters wore black clothes to graphically paint their level of hardship.
“As you see us today, we are walking corpses. We collected full salary in January, half in February and March. We are not declaring war but appealing to the state government to pay us.
“This suffering is unbearable and we don’t want to be emotional. This college can’t be self-sustaining. We are talking of N181 million for payment of salaries.
“The approach will ruin the training of teachers. All we demand is full payment of our salaries from February,” he said.