OK FM
EducationEnvironmentTop News

Female Volunteer Teachers in Marshall City want their names surface on Gov’t’s Payroll

Margibi County – Sharon Okai is growing frustrated of being a volunteer teacher at the only public school in Marshall City, Margibi County.

For more than half a decade, she has always upheld the obligation of giving back to the A.D Peabody Elementary and Junior High School – the only government-run school in her hometown. But it now appears that her passion is running out.

“I come to this school and teach the nursery class every school day for five years now, but I can’t get any money to benefit myself,” she tells a visiting reporter.

Okai and other volunteers at the school have been pushing for several years to get their names on the payroll, but to no avail.

“They (the school administration) have asked us to submit our particulars but every time we do it they give us assurance but it turns out to be another delay or they tell us to waiting and wait,” she said.

With a new administration at the Ministry of Education following the ascendency of a new government, Okai is now hopeful that her name will surface on the school’s payroll any time soon.

Marthalyn Hilton is another volunteer teacher at the school. Like Sharon, she’s also making frantic sacrifices while keeping her finger crossed. She has remained hopeful of a brighter day for more than four years.

“Because we are in the community, we are trying to help our community,” she said. “We do not expect people from outside to come here and work as volunteer because they won’t be patient; they will leave and go.”

“But for us that are living here, we have to help teach our children so they can become better people in the future and help our community.”

The first grade Reading teacher relies on the goodwill of the administration to put food on her table.

“Sometimes when they (school administration) know that we are stranded, they help us,” Hilton said, adding that the compensation is barely enough to put food on her table.

Several engagements with the school administration and district education officer have proved futile and we keep getting the “wait and wait” response, she said.

Alfred McCauley, principal of the school, is aware of the laundry list of problems his school faces.

The volunteer teachers’ salary issue is just one of the many problems the school, which had over 500 students last academic, is facing ahead of the next school year.

Currently, the school building is in ruins while lack of chairs was a pressing problem until a charity foundation donated over 200 chairs to the school recently.

Mr. McCauley says the names of the two female teachers have been summited to the MOE for consideration, and he’s confident that the names will show up on the payroll next academic year.

“These teachers have been doing very well and I hope that the ministry can give them consideration by putting them on the payroll,” he said.

Liberia’s public school sector continues to struggle with a bloated payroll crisis, which observers claim adversely impact the proper use of limited resources for the improvement of the sector.

Early this month, the chair of the Liberian Senate standing committee on education called on the minister of education to clean the payroll because according to him, “names duplication is causing teachers to be underpaid”.

Senator Dallas Gueh was arguing that ghost names was preventing deserving teachers from getting on the payroll as in the case of the volunteer teachers at the only public school in Marshall.

  

+ posts

Related posts

Deputy Commissioner Decontee King-Sackie now heads LRA as OIC

OK FM 99.5

President Boakai: Agriculture is the most important engine for growth in an agro-based economy.

Godfred Badu Quansah

Liberia: Benoni Urey Calls for Establishment of War Crimes Court

OK FM 99.5

Commerce Ministry Boasts of Addressing Reported Hike in Petroleum Prices

OK FM 99.5

Cuttington University gets interim president amid protest

OK FM 99.5

Unity Party-Boakai Think Tank Joins CDC

OK FM 99.5
OKAY COMMUNICATION INC.