July 17, 2007
Freetown, Sierra Leone
Timap for Justice calls on the Sierra Leone Ministry of Education to fulfill its obligations to junior workers in two longstanding, egregious cases.
Seventeen junior workers of the Boys’ Secondary School in Magburaka were wrongfully denied 48 months of salary and their retirement benefits when they were retired in February 2004. Officials at the Ministry concede that the workers were wronged but have failed to provide a remedy. Timap has advocated with the Ministry regarding this case for more than two years to no avail. At one point, the workers were asked to come to Freetown to receive payment, but when they arrived they were turned back without explanation. The workers are elderly men who were employed by Boys’ School for more than thirty years. Seven of them have died in total poverty while the Ministry has failed to act.
Thirty junior workers of the former Bo Teacher’s College were denied work, wage, and due process when Njala College took over Bo Teacher’s College in 2006. The workers received letters indicating that they would be redeployed or retired, but neither occurred and they have not been paid or given work since April of 2006. Njala College and the Ministry of Education each claim that the other is responsible; meanwhile the workers languish.
“The Ministry and, in the second case, Njala College, should act immediately to right these shameful and longstanding injustices against people who have served their country for decades,” said Timap co-director Vivek Maru. Timap is already pursuing legal recourse in the Boys’ School case, and will do so in the Njala case as well if no action is taken. “But litigation should not be necessary: the Ministry should willingly fulfill its most basic obligations to its own staff.”
Several Sierra Leonean newspapers have covered Timap’s work on this issue, including the Standard Times Press.
For more information, please contact:
Vivek Maru, Director, +232.33.511.560;
Daniel Sesay, Lead Paralegal, +232.77.209.918 / +232.76.926.090.