PDP backs Kaduna teachers’ strike
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Wednesday said it was in support of the current indefinite strike by public school teachers in Kaduna State.
The State Chairman of PDP, Mr Felix Hyat made the declaration in a statement signed by the party’s Publicity Secretary, Mr Abraham Catoh, made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Kaduna.
He faulted the state government on its threat to sack teachers that joined the strike, stressing that strike was “a legal means for all civil servants to seek redress on the injustice presently meted out on them.’’
According to the PDP chairman, the sack of the teachers was callous, insensitive and meant to increase the level of unemployment and poverty in the state.
“The incessant sack of civil servants in the state, if allowed to continue unabated, would definitely lead to high rate of crime, social vices and would dampen the morale of civil servants in the state,” Hyat added.
The PDP chairman also faulted the provision of N1 billion in the state 2018 budget to construct new legislative quarters after selling the ones on the ground by the government.
“We condemned this act in its entirety, for it is another ploy to fleece the resources of the people of our state of their collective commonwealth.’’
Hyat also accused the state government of undertaking “fictitious projects and consultancy contracts’’ with no bearing or direct impact on the masses.
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On security, the state PDP chairman said Gov. Nasiru El-Rufa’i has demonstrated “ineptitude and lack of capacity to curb the insecurity challenge bedevilling the state.’’
According to the chairman, the PDP would “reinstate all unjustly sacked civil servants’’ if elected in 2019.
He advised the electorate to use their permanent voter card to vote out the APC government in the state in 2019.
Reacting to the statement, the State APC Director, Media and Publicity, Mr Manasseh Istifanus said the party would not exchange words with the PDP.
He, however, said the sack of teachers and other civil servants was a part of ongoing reforms in the civil service.
According to him, the state government would replace the over 21,000 teachers sacked with 25, 000 qualified ones that would add value to the education sector.
On the N1 billion budgeted for the building of legislative quarters by the government, Istifanus dismissed the claim as mere “concoction’’ by the PDP.
He stressed that the government had considered so many factors in arriving at the number of civil servants being disengaged, so as to rejuvenate and inject vibrancy in the state civil service.
By NAN
