Vice chancellor of the Federal University of Technology Akure, (FUTA), Prof. Adebiyi Daramola, says a new policy of the Muhammadu Buhari-led government led to the retrenchment of some staff members of the FUTA Staff Primary School.

Daramola, who was addressing a press conference in Akure, stated that the management of the school fired the affected staff in line with a federal government’s directive issued last December, through the Federal Ministry of Education. The new policy entails that funding of staff schools within federal universities should be from internally generated revenue (IGR) of the schools.

The sacked staff were, however, asked to reapply to be re-engaged into their former offices, this time as employees of the university’s governing council.

Daramola explained that as a result of the policy, all federal universities have been warned against including names of staff members of the affected schools in their personnel budget proposals to government, as they (staff members) would be considered as ghost workers.

The VC stated that the university’s management met with the affected staff to intimate them of the development and the decision of the institution’s council to employ all the disengaged staff as its employees.

Said he, “We served them the disengagement letters and declared all the posts in the school vacant and put up internal and eternal advertisements, with a promise to give all the affected staff concession over others. But only two people reapplied while the leadership of the two unions instructed them not to apply.

“They went to the Deji of Akure, Oba Aladetoyinbo and the Bishop of Akure Diocese, Bishop Simeon Borokini and also the state Commissioner of Police, Mike Ogbodu, and we promised to extend the date of submission to honour these people and allow the disengaged workers to apply, but they did not apply.”

He said that university’s management decision to continue to pay the disengaged staff their monthly salaries while the impasse lasted, was one of the actions guided by the need to ensure that pupils and staff of the primary school were not stranded following the decision of Federal Government to discontinue the salary payment.

Daramola affirmed that the management has decided to improve the standard of the school by giving the school a facelift through infrastructural development, added that once parents start paying their children’s school fees, “there will be pressure to hire capable hands to give the best to the pupils,” since according to him, some of the sacked teachers were indolent.