By Ezra Ukanwa, Abuja

More than 20 teachers of the Parent-Teachers Association, PTA, made their way into the Office of the Head of Civil Service, expressing their dissatisfaction over alleged exclusion and delay in receiving their appointment letters, despite being officially regularized.

One of the teachers with Kings College Lagos and Leader of the Concerned Teachers of Parent Teachers Association, Akinloye Olaide, expressed frustration with the lack of transparency and fairness in the selection process.

He argued that their years of service and qualifications should not be taken for granted.

He said despite numerous attempts made since 2020 to bring the issue to the attention of the HoS, the PTA teachers who applied for regularization have not received their appointment letters.

He added that other PTA teachers who underwent the regularization process have already received their letters.

He said: “We are here to protest over our appointment letter that has not been released because sometime in 2018/2019 the federal government gave a waiver through the head of service, to regularize PTA teachers into the system and by virtue of that, the ministry split it to seven schools in which our school did officially.

“After that, sometime in January 2020, the letters were released. Unfortunately, there were omissions and these omissions cut across many schools, like my own school, the whole seven names, were not captured.

“But, we raised an alarm that our letter has not been released and we were promised that the matter will be resolved. After that, when COVID-19 came which made the head of service place an embargo on our employment, we stood up to say that we were existing employees. Nobody listened to us. Since then, we’ve been writing an appeal letter. We’ve been coming here physically. Nobody listened.

“Not until April, we had a protest at the Civil Service Commission before the Civil Service Commission, now sent a validation letter for the exercise to release our appointment letter.

“And the head of service received that letter because we saw the letter, the civil service communicated to us that they have done their own part. When we did follow up, the head of service told us that they had sent it to the ministry for comment. We got to the ministry and the Ministry said they have submitted all that is required, but up till now nothing has been done.

“And our other colleagues have collected their letters and are working on their arrears. These are people who served several schools 10 to 20 years as PTA teachers, using their youthful age to contribute their duty to the system positively.

“What I observe here is that many of our leaders that are at the helm of affairs are wicked and heartless and that matters that don’t relate to them and their family does not concern them because we’ve been obedient enough to have taken all the necessary steps right from 2020 without causing any chaos and nobody answered us.

“Today, many of us slept in the car park, some slept in the ministry corridor. How our leaders will be so heartless that until they turn the obedient citizens to something else before they will listen to a matter of injustice on the land.

“This is injustice of the highest order. We have the cumulative list of the names forwarded to the civil service to be regularized, up to over 700 names. My name is on number 3, others are in number 5 but numbers 100, 500, and 300 have collected letters. What happened to the few ones that didn’t collect letters? Even if there is an error, how long will it take them to correct the error?

“What we want them to do now is for them to resolve this matter with immediate effect or we turn this place into our house until our appointment letter is released. We are calling on the presidency, the head of service, and all the agencies and stakeholders that matter. They should work together and release our letters with immediate effect because this injustice that has been meted to us since 2020 is too much.”