PM Yang receives protesting teachers at last

Prime Minister Philemon Yang has finally lend a listening ear to the protesting Littoral primary school teachers after they spent four uninterrupted nights sleeping at the entrance to his office vowing not to leave till he addresses them.

One of the protesting teachers told The Journal that the PM on Friday May 15 delegated one of his collaborators at about 9 a.m. to receive them and address their grievances.

The teachers were protesting exclusion from the recruitment/integration of Parent Teachers’ Association, PTA teachers, into the public service.

Our informant, however, said the envoy did not make any concrete offers such as to unruffled the anger in their hearts. Rather, she said, he sent them back to the Ministry of Basic Education where equally no solutions were given them. “I don’t think anything concrete was discussed in our meeting with the Prime Minister’s envoy. He merely convinced us with their usual political talk and sent us back to our ministry,” she said.

At the Basic Education Ministry, our informant said they were received by the director of human resources but he won’t give any ready solutions to their grievances. “All he did was try to show us statistics on how the recruitment was done and other trivial things which did not actually reflect our grievances,” she said.

The Douala based teachers, who had earlier sworn they won’t leave until their grievances were addressed, began the protest Monday May 11.

When they started the protest, for two days, no official from the Star Building cared enough to find out what their grievances were. Only a piece of paper (audience form) was circulated on Tuesday for them to fill and append their names and signatures.

We gathered that since the aggrieved teachers camped at the entrance to the PM’s office, Yang remained unperturbed, despite the fact that he used same entrance to and from his office. “When the Prime Minister is about entering or leaving his office, security elements come and clear us from the entrance. The PM sees us here every day, yet he has decided to give a blind eye to the placards bearing our grievances,” a protesting teacher who gave his name only as James, said, shortly before they were received.

Some of the protesters related how they went for days without eating, not until a security officer at the PM’s gate took upon himself out of pity and offered them a paltry quantity of “puff puff” on Thursday.