South Sudan: State Director for Education denies that 200 unpaid East African teachers in Bentiu want to go home

Over two hundred secondary teachers from Kenya and Uganda working in Bentiu, southern Sudan are demanding to be paid salary arrears and are requesting to be taken back to their countries.  

According to the below copied report from Sudan Radio Service, the teachers have stayed five months without getting salaries.  The state government has agreed to pay them two months salary and the rest before the end of the year.

Today, Friday, October 2, someone posted the following comment on Sudan Watch post "UN Jobs - International Job Vacancies in Sudan"

Anonymous said...
How i wish you could intervine the east African teachers' issue /cry who were employed to serve the government in Unity state Bentiu, currently under alot of intimidation cause of fighting for their rights under a theme pay us our five months arears and take us back to our home countries.

Here is a report from Sudan Radio Service - Teachers in Bentiu Want to Go Home  - 25 September 2009: 

(Bentiu) – Over two hundred secondary teachers from East Africa working in Bentiu are demanding to be paid salary arrears and are requesting to be taken back to their countries.

Ann Kosgei is one of the teachers. She spoke to Sudan Radio Service by telephone from Bentiu on Friday.

[Ann Kosgei]: “Yesterday, we went to the Ministry of Education and we told them that the teachers wanted to go home. The reason was that the situation of the teachers now. We stayed five months without getting salaries. As you know, we are East Africans, we are coming from Kenya and Uganda. Here we don’t have anything to eat, we are not given money, we are not given food, we have nothing to eat, so we went to the ministry to take us back to our countries.”

The state Director for Education, Peter Dak Galuak, confirmed that the teachers were demanding their salaries but denied claims that they wanted to return home.

[Peter Dak-Nuer]: “Not all of the teachers want to go back to their countries, it’s just about 30 of them who came yesterday and said that they wanted to go back. But we told them that those who want to go back should write their names, and they refused. I think it’s just a way to threaten us so that they get their way. I talked to them and told them that they should go back to their places and the government is working hard to pay their money, even the state Minister of Local Government, Samuel Lony, talked to them and they listened to him. That is why nobody is coming to the ministry today.”

Dak said that the state government has agreed to pay them two months salary and the rest would be paid to the teachers before the end of the year.