By Dipo Olowookere
Kaduna State Governor, Mr Nasir El-Rufai, has announced raising the salary of teachers of public schools in the state by 32.5 percent.
The gesture comes weeks after the teachers called off their industrial action to protest the sacking of over 20,000 teachers in the state who failed competency test conducted by government.
Speaking at a media briefing on Thursday in Kaduna, the Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Mr Ja’afaru Sani, said the state government has put in place some other incentives to motivate the teachers.
He disclosed that some of these incentives include five percent extra pay for teachers posted to rural areas, motorcycles to ease transportation, three-bedroom accommodation for head teachers and two-bedroom accommodation for other teachers.
Mr Sani said Governor El-Rufai was committed to providing quality education in the state and make the learning environment very conducive for the pupils.
“Currently, we have more teachers in urban areas than we have in rural areas because the salary package is the same and so whenever teachers are posted to rural schools they redeploy to urban centres.’’
“The El-Rufa’i led-administration strongly believes that only access to affordable and quality education will ensure social mobility for children of the poor.
“Only quality education will equip them with the needed skills to be creative, inventive and be part of the social movement towards development and self-fulfilment,” the Commission told newsmen yesterday.
Mr Sani also disclosed that the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) would post the first batch of 10,000 newly recruited teachers to primary schools within the next two weeks.