Don't implement teachers' allowance, civil servants warn Ekiti

Civil servants in Ekiti State have warned the government against the implementation of 27.5 per  cent Teachers Peculiar Allowance if it is  not ready to extend the same to other categories of workers.

Teachers in the state have been on strike for four weeks to demand for the implementation of the allowance, but core civil servants are now also asking the state government to extend such benefit to them.

The Chairman of the Trade Union Congress, Mr. Kolawole Olaiya, at a press conference in Ado-Ekiti on Thursday, said the core civil servants were not opposing the demands of the teachers.

 But he said that other categories of workers must also enjoy any increment the government was ready to concede to the teachers.

He said teachers in the state were not supposed to benefit from the 33 per cent relativity allowance but he explained that they joined other workers to demand for the pay rise and they benefited from it.

According to him, the teachers signed away the TPA to begin to enjoy relativity allowance, saying if the state government now grants them the 27.5 per cent  TPA, "it will be fair to also extend such to those in the core civil service."

He stated that all workers were behind the teachers to get what they were fighting for, but he reminded the government to also be ready to award such wage increment to other workers.

Olaiya said, "In 2011, when the  53.9 per cent  enhanced salary was granted to the core civil service, NUT leaders,  Joseph Arogundade  and Yemi Omoyeni and others dropped 27.5 per cent and benefitted from the 33 per cent that was conceded to the civil servants then because it was higher.

"Our argument is this, if teachers were allowed at the tail end of our negotiation with the government on the relativity, then nothing stops other workers  from benefitting  from 27.5 per cent Teachers Peculiar  Allowance."



Punch