Public review article

TROUBLING REALITIES OF HIGH-COST LOW SALARY SYNDROME OF TEACHERS IN SIERRA LEONE

By Marcus Bangura

The plight of the teaching profession in Sierra Leone is a narrative that has hit the headlines in recent times with teachers becoming more vocal than ever in respect of their profession and the high cost of low salary syndrome that has dragged them into abject poverty since independence.

It therefore goes without saying that the strikes and protests that erupted in the country at the eve of the 62nd Independent Anniversary of Sierra Leone and the subsequent weeks of teachers laying down their tools until government improve their conditions of service and pay attractive salaries and allowances for rent, transportation and medical among others, compounded with gross inequalities in salary emolument compared to other sector workers and contemporaries with similar credentials are clear manifestation of the plight of teachers and the troubling realities of the teaching profession in Sierra Leone.

Studies have painted a sad picture of the conditions of service of teachers in Sierra Leone as appalling, demotivating, unattractive and unappreciated. According to one study: “…teaching in Sierra Leone is an unattractive and unappreciated profession with teachers contending with low pay, late pay, or… no pay at all”. This is a clear indicator of the plight of teachers in Sierra Leone.

This cataclysmic situation has left teachers in a quagmire rambling in the rubble in sheer poverty and hardship fighting to make a living and support their family.

As it is, the average monthly take home salary for teachers is at One Million three hundred thousand Leones (Le 1,300,000), an equivalent of one hundred US dollars (100 USD) and Eighty British Pounds (80 BP), irrespective of the president promising teachers a special package. The salary does not stretch to enable a teacher to support himself and feed his family at a time when Sierra Leoneans are experiencing extreme hardship with a shambling economy, uncontrolled inflation, devaluation of the Leone, stagnant salaries and widespread poverty and above all, where the prices of basic commodities, such as food stuffs like bread, petroleum products like fuel, electricity tariffs, data bundles, water rates, transportation as well as rents have all hit the roof top more than ever before in the country.

As a matter of fact, the teaching profession in Sierra Leone is in a quagmire that has existed for ages and to which existing governments have invested little at the high cost of teachers, who are paid pittance that does not match their livelihood or take care of their families Hence, to justify the maxim that when you become a teacher, you signed the bond of poverty. The impeccable truth is that the present conditions of service for teachers is appalling for which they struggle to make a living and manage the burden of low monthly salary to support themselves and their families.

It is generally obvious that at the heart of the teacher the real value of their professionalism is unattractive, demotivating and unappreciated due to inequalities in salary remuneration in other sectors, irrespective of the fact that they hold similar credentials. The unbearable circumstances have forced a good number of good teachers to find a second job or quit the class room because their monthly salaries cannot meet their needs to take care of their family.

This quagmire has placed the teaching profession in a dungeon, leaving teachers entrapped, entangled, wobbled and dangled in poverty with stress of low pay and lack of recognition. This speaks volume of the fact that teachers are psychologically imprisoned and there is no way out from the encumbrances, unless the government and politicians who holds the key to their dignity willingly and readily opens the door and revitalized their dignity in society for a happy living. Governments and their drivers should stand tall and doubly redouble their efforts with passion and judiciously do the needful by unlocking the doors of abject poverty they have been experiencing so as to allow wealth to flow and live a better life like the lawyers they taught, the doctors they prepared, the bankers they raised, the engineers they schooled and the politicians they inspired among others. The government should step up, do the needful and fix the plight of the teaching profession and improve the wellbeing and conditions of service of teachers in an attractive way. Otherwise, the Free Quality Education is nothing but a mere mask and a White Elephant, if government turned blind eyes and deaf ears to salvage the plight of teachers who are only demanding for improve conditions of service.

a cut 21% from the national budget as popularized by the Bio led New Direction Government with loads of talks about making the teaching profession attractive. As teachers are struggling to make a living, they cannot support themselves and their families with the burden of high-cost low salary syndrome.

Studies have painted a sad picture of the conditions of service of teachers in Sierra Leone.

as appalling, demotivating, unattractive and unappreciated. According to one study conducted by Amman and O’Donnell, 2011 “…teaching in Sierra Leone is an unattractive and unappreciated profession with teachers contending with low pay, late pay, or… no pay at all”. This is a clear manifestation of the plight of teachers in Sierra Leone.

This cataclysmic situation is worrying as teachers are trapped in a web of melancholy, utter dismay, stress and above all, sheer poverty, hardship and stress since independence.

In their desire to upgrade status, teachers who earns an average monthly salary of Le 1.3 million, an equivalent of about $100 through their fired leaders of the Teachers Solidarity Movement (TSM), an offshoot of the Sierra Leone Teachers Union (SLTU) are urgently demanding a workable “living wage” for high pay and better allowances for rents, transport and medical among others.

As at April 21st this year, the TSM in an open letter blamed the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) and the All-People’s Congress (APC), the two dominant political parties for the perennial hardship their political spin-doctors have inflicted on teachers since independence. They lamented that for sixty years teachers have been treated recklessly and left to starve with impunity, asking touching questions as to whether they don’t deserve to live like lawyers, engineers, doctors and politicians among others.

At the eve of independence, 26th April 2022, which unequivocally marks the Bio led New Direction government almost four years in governance with flamboyant promises to make the teaching profession attractive and enviable, pay teachers a special package and grant scholarships to children of teachers over ten years standing all came to nothing. The government was able to add only 30% increment to the abysmal teacher salary but claimed to cut 21% from the budget to roll the President Flagship programme of Free Quality Education (FQE) which has come under heavy criticism of failing. The unbearable burden on teachers sparked of the strike which became a magnet of attention, attracting teachers from far and wide.

Like a powder keg waiting for explosion, the strike exploded and spread quickly nationwide after the unlawful arrests and detentions of three TSM leaders, including the TSM Interim leader and two in Bo whilst advocating for improved conditions of service for teachers. Its presence was felt in all the 16 district headquarter towns from the south to the east and from the west to the north through north west. A wave that saw most teachers laying down their tools and schools opened but the degree of turned out for both teachers and pupils in schools remained awful and worrying for weeks. The protests left most teachers absent from school and scores of pupils returning home after they found that teachers did not go to school as normal. Some teachers who turned up did not border to teach or conduct lessons and pupils who went to school were not taught and whilst other teachers embarked on a sit at home strike, all working towards a common agenda for improved living wage. As there have been great expectation from government to apply a rapid response mechanism, we saw government down playing the issue and the Minister of Basic and Secondary Education adamant and treating the impasse with a pinch of salt at the exasperation of teachers and detriment of pupils, who stands at high risk of falling further behind on their learning since Covid 19 gave them a setback from continuing normal education.

The unfortunate situation that left pupils in public schools trooping back home was triggered by the unlawful arrest and detention of three fired, vivacious and outspoken TSM leaders of which their fired and outspoken Interim Chairman, Mohamed Salieu Khan was grabbed by officers of the Sierra Leone Police outside the precincts of the African Young Voices Television (AYV) after an interview, whilst the other two were in Bo. The arrest and detention of these leaders deepens the strike and propelled it into a full-blown strike as thousands of teachers heeded to the TSM call to boycott classes and mount pressure on government to increase salaries and improve conditions. Teachers they will continue to boycott classes if their conditions of service are not satisfactorily met by government as they will no longer contend with the poor conditions of service. Teachers have asserted that they would not go back to work after May 26 2022, unless they are satisfied with the outcome of the negotiation between the government and the SLTU, the legitimate body, responsible to advocate for the welfare of teachers in the country.

What is worrying at the moment as to whether the government will live up to the expectation of teachers, pupils and parents who would be waiting in anticipation that government will resolve the impasse and increase the salaries of teachers which is at low ebb and below the poverty line. However, if government turned blind eyes and deaf ears on the demands of teachers, there is the likelihood that the strike will go deeper and the Free Quality Education will continue its liquidation in addition to number of criticisms levelled against it

back to work after May 26 2022, unless they are satisfied with the outcome of the negotiation between the government and the SLTU, the legitimate body, responsible to advocate for the welfare of teachers in the country.

How Sierra Leone Ruler Madam Yoko Manipulated The British For Her Own Ends

Howafrica.com May 18, 2022

No one knows the exact date of her birth but historians say that it must have been around 1849 in a small village not far from Tiama in Sierra Leone. Madam Yoko, originally known by her birth name Soma, was initiated into the women’s society, the Sande, also known as Bundu in Mende. Among the Mendi, almost every female is a member of the Sande. After Christmas, girls at about the age of puberty enter the “bush” and often remain there until after Easter and the beginning of the rains, according to historians.

They learn the Bundu or Bondo law, the ritual dancing, and all that will prepare them to become wives and mothers in society. Yoko became well known as an excellent dancer after being initiated into the women’s society where she acquired the name Yoko. After a first marriage that didn’t last, she got married again to the chief of Tiama, Gbenjei, and even though she was barren, Gbenjei made her his head wide.

When Gbenjei died, Yoko then married Gbenjei’s friend Gbanya, who was the chief of Senahun to the southwest of Tiama. She became involved in local government issues and even helped secure the release of Gbanya when he was detained by British colonial officials. Yoko went directly to the Governor to appeal for her husband’s release. The governor was moved by Yoko’s “beauty and feminine graces” that he got her husband released.

By and by, Gbanya used his wife Yoko in diplomatic missions to the British and to other chiefs and that made her very popular in many areas including Freetown. When Gbanya died around 1885, Yoko later became queen of Senahun and she used her friendship with the British to gain control of Kpaa Mende, forming a confederacy. History says that she brought the Kpaa Mende region — now made up of chiefdoms — under her control not only with the help of the British but also through alliances and warfare. With the help of the British, she also destroyed her main political rival, Kamanda, in the late 1880s.

While expanding her territories thanks to protection given by the British, she started her own Sande bush, where she trained some of the best young girls from Kpaa Mende and married them off to chiefs or men who would help her in her moves to expand.

Yoko also helped put an end to the 1898 hut tax war. The rebellion started after the “hut tax” the British imposed in 1893, commanding Sierra Leoneans to pay for the right to live on their own land. Many ended up working as laborers to pay for this tax. Yoko ordered her people to pay the tax but the sub-chiefs refused and rebelled. Yoko had to take refuge in the police barracks amid attacks by her own people.

She would later rule as a paramount chief in the new British protectorate until 1906 when she passed away. Sources say she committed suicide because she saw nothing good in her new role and was perhaps “bored”.

“At the height of her authority she deliberately committed suicide because as she told her attendants just after drinking poison she had enjoyed to the full all that life had to give, power and love and now that old age had approached found that it had nothing more to offer her,” Sir Harry Luke, an Englishman who arrived in Sierra Leone as A.D.C to the Governor, Sir Leslie Probyn, wrote.

Even though Yoko used the British to rise and gain control of her territory, she never welcomed missionaries and never converted to Christianity, interestingly.

President Bio’s flag-bearer position is illegal -Says Stephen Sahr Mambu

slconcordtimes.com May 18, 2022 5:24 PM

Stephen Sahr Mambu

Stephen Sahr Mambu has condemned President Julius Maada Bio’s nomination as flag bearer of the Sierra Leone Peoples’ Party (SLPP) for the 2023 election, branding it as ‘improper, non-transparent, illegal and undemocratic.’

Mambu was one of the many people who had intended to vie for the flag-bearer position of the ruling SLPP but was not given the opportunity to do so.

Mambu was speaking to journalists in a press conference yesterday at the SLAJ’s Harry Yansaneh’s Hall, Freetown.

SLPP held their delegate convention in December last year and automatically declared President Bio flag bearer to seek re-election in 2023. After his confirmation, President Bio assured membership and supporters of the party that he will win the next presidential election in the first ballot and without going for runoff.

But the President’s flag bearer confirmation during the convention purposely meant for election of the party executive is now being questioned. He was nominated by Prince Harding, Chairman of the Party and confirmed flag bearer without election, depriving potential aspirants the opportunity to present their candidacy for the delegates to decide.

According to Mambu, the move to use the convention to confirm the flag bearer position was premature and unconstitutional.

All candidates should have a chance to offer their visions of leadership individually, and delegates allowed to freely and democratically voting for the candidate of their choice.

“That’s what government of the people is …not pre-ordinated results but a chance to for delegates to consider what they think best for the people they represent,” Mambu told the press.

Stephen Sahr Mambu is definitely calling for a new delegate election, declaring the results of the last SLPP delegates election which he believed was deeply flawed, ‘null and void.’

Much of the SLPP big names in the PAOPA circle that led the party in to the 2018 victory were re-elected in that convention.

He further took a quick swipe on the party chairman, Prince Harding who has been battling a murder case involving his security personnel shooting his driver. Mambu said the Chairman’s decision to nominate the President Bio was a ‘downright criminal act’ and a ploy to avoid prosecution for his allege involvement in the murder.

But again, the nomination and election of President Bio was undemocratic and lawless, Mambu reiterated, urging the press to help bring light to the story behind the President’s nomination.

THE OSWALD HANCILES COLUMN

ACC Act-2008 and “Unexplained Wealth” (Part1)

(Published in Canadian-based Patriotic Vanguard newspaper, 3rd September, 2009 http://www.thepatrioticvanguard.com/acc-act-2008-and-unexplained-wealth-part1)

The President of the Republic of Sierra Leone, Ernest Bai Koroma, who recently received a lot of flack from a BBC World Service documentary on Sierra Leone for alleged festering corruption (which raises the specter of Sierra Leone relapsing into its brutish civil war past), has publicly committed himself to excising the malignant corruption tumor from our body politic.

It behooves all the citizenry, the patriots, and, especially the enlightened and courageous few, to not only understand the profundity of corruption, but, to help in communicating the ramification of corruption to the masses. Since we are a nation ruled by laws, I would want to think that the Anti-Corruption Bill-2008 should have been more painstakingly and imaginatively communicated to the public, a dialogue stimulated between the executive/legislative/judiciary branches of government and Civil Society before the ACC-2008 Bill would have been made into the ACC-2008 law. I dare say, though there was much published about the ACC-Bill in especially THE STANDARD TIMES newspaper last year, there was very little public dialogue on it.

On Wednesday, August 18, 2009, while dialoguing with three senior staff of the Anti-Corruption Commission-Sierra Leone, one of them, Koloneh Sankoh, the Ag. Director of Public Education in the ACC, bemoaned the reality that when bills are being discussed in Parliament, very few people show any interest in them, not to talk of people striving to make inputs into these bills, before they become laws. Maybe, the disinterested stance of the public to these bills could be because of the perception the hapless pauperized majority have of not only the political system, but, particularly the judicial system. The public don’t trust the governing elite. They don’t think that laws would make much difference in their lives. As regards corruption, I would try to help by lending appropriate images to aid the public’s understanding of what it is.

Corruption is like cancer in the body. If a cancer in the leg is becoming virulent, there is no option in saving the rest of the body, but to chop off the cancerous leg. Corruption is like tapeworm in the large intestines of the body. The tape worm would keep on imbibing most of the food in the affected person’s stomach – leaving its victim weak, emaciated and, when the tapeworm becomes too bloated, would kill its victim.

Corruption is worse than Foday Sankoh’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF) war on largely civilians. Yes, pause, and re-read that line. Worse than…!! With all the chopping of the hands and legs of people, with all the throwing of babies into boiling pots of palm oil to ‘baptize’ them, with all the abduction of children, males, who were used as child soldiers, females, who were abused as sex slaves, with all the naked terror which was the principal ideology manifested by the RUF, those who are rampantly corrupt are WORSE OFF than the RUF.

For Corruption is the Mother and Father of nasty wars like the RUF waged on mainly civilians. Whereas you can win military and diplomatic victories over rebel groups like the RUF, and they would disappear for decades, Corruption would always ‘born new pikin’, just like the RUF, or, ‘new pikin way bad pass di RUF’. We should be heartened that in giving more teeth to the Anti-Corruption Act-2008, the APC government of President Koroma is flexing its muscle to annihilate the corruption monster. But, wait, let us examine the details:

In the Anti-Corruption Act-2008, PART IV, under “OFFENCES”; sub section, “Corrupt Acquisition of wealth; Section 26 reads: (1) A public officer commits an offence of corrupt acquisition of wealth if it is found that he is in control or in possession of any resources or property or in receipt of the benefit of any advantage which he may reasonably be suspected of having acquired or received corruptly or in circumstances which amount to an offence under this Act….”

Breathe in and breathe out on that one, before you read the Sections of the law which are related to the above:” (2) Where during a trial of an offence under subsection (1), the Court is satisfied that there is reason to believe that any person is holding pecuniary resources or property in trust or otherwise on behalf of the accused person or acquired such resources or property as a gift from the accused, such resources or property shall, until the contrary is proved, be presumed to have been in the control of the accused….”

Do you really understand that legalese which is intrinsic in a law that touches us all so gravely? Chances are that you are going to answer “No” to my question. One of the things that has to be changed about the judicial system is not only that our lawyers and judges must stop blindly imitating their former British colonial masters in how they dress (why should they ALWAYS be wearing dark suits, and that ‘baby-looking bib’ that passes for a decent neck tie, plus, horse-hair wigs in the sweltering heat of tropical Sierra Leone?), they should also change the way they write the laws in our law books.

Clearly, the manner in which our laws are written are meant to intimidate non-lawyers, ‘lay persons’, and/or, is a deliberate attempt to obfuscate issues, laws, which are like the skeleton of a human body. The funny thing is that in their legal system, even the former colonial master, Britain, is in the process of “change” (that ‘Obama-istic’ word; or, should we say that Obama borrowed his “Change” mantra from Charles Margai’s People’s Movement for Democratic Change [PMDC] formed about 2006; and President Ernest Bai Koroma “Agenda for Change” programme?) from pompous English to simple English, which the majority of educated people would more easily comprehend.

What the legal words above mean in simple terms is this. If you are a public official earning Le1million a month, and you are ‘caught’ owning a One Billion Leones house, you are going to be asked, “Where did you get the money from?” – by the ACC. Now, if you can’t show the ACC a business you are operating to earn the money to build the house with; if you can’t show the ACC that you inherited the wealth, you are going to be prosecuted, and would likely be convicted.

If this section had been fully explained to the masses, there would have been dancing and jubilation on the streets of Freetown. Dancing for the APC!!! Except, of course, the SLPP political opposition would have nudged the masses that that what they would be rejoicing over is probably a ‘ba nya fakie’ provision (a useless provision) in the ACC-2008 Act. Koloneh Sankoh of the ACC explained to me on August 18, 2009 that that provision on “unexplained wealth is not retroactive”. Not retroactive?!!

Well, compatriots, in the presence of other ACC senior management staff that day – ACC’s Acting Director, Public Education & External Outreach, Desmond R. E. Johnson; Acting Head of External Outreach, Adu Amara – I rephrased the words of Koloneh Sankoh as she interpreted the ACC-2008 Act’s section on acquiring “unexplained wealth” to me.

I said: “It means that if you stole millions of dollars of Sierra Leone’s money when the SLPP’s Albert Margai was Prime Minister in the 1960s, or, during the over fifteen years APC’s President Siaka Stevens was in power in the 1970s/1980s; or, when Valentine Strasser’s military NPRC held on to power between 1992 and 1996; or, during the eleven years the SLPP’s President, Alhaji Tejan Kabbah, was in power between 1996 and 2007; and you have built many mansions, and siphoned millions of our dollars to banks in the Europe/U.S., you are now FREE to ENJOY your ill-gotten loot….”. Buff case!

Koloneh, not able to disguise the smile that creased her dainty lips said she would not put it that way; and she pretended to sniff at my vivid language, and stuck to her abstraction of “not retroactive”. In the room of staidly dressed three males that day, Koloneh, discordantly dressed in flowery black, red, green and yellow maxi skirt, tried to harden her soft girlish voice by stressing that after the ACC Act of 2008, all “unexplained wealth” of public officials when identified could be case for prosecution. And what would be the punitive measures against those who are prosecuted under this “unexplained wealth” provision? Don’t laugh now….

Your unexplained wealth could be seized by the Judge who convicts you. You could be fined “not less” than Le30 million. You could be sent to jail for not less than THREE years. Pretty heavy penalties, you may think. But, wait, Sierra Leone has to be dealing there with not only gray-haired old men who could be pretty scared of going to jail for even two months, we have to be dealing with some youth in their 20s who handle billions of Leones of public money. So, what crude and cynical calculations can a chronically corrupt person make in the face of such a law?

If a person steals three billion Leones, he can risk building a house with one billion Leones; and, the other two billion is changed into gold and diamonds and stored in safety deposit boxes where the ACC will never get their hands on it in a thousand years. Such a person knows that if caught, he can bribe a judge hundreds of millions of Leones to get only the minimum sentences. (Who is going to be shameless enough to say that bribing judges in Sierra Leone is uncommon?). The plus and minuses for a person from a poverty stricken background – like most Sierra Leoneans – are stacked towards the person taking the risk to acquire illegal wealth.

If this section of the ACC-2008 bill on unexplained wealth had been fully explained to the masses, if a referendum had been held on the ACC-2008 Bill, I would place my bet on the masses choosing a life sentence, or, even, like in China, where those who are convicted of serious corruption are executed, the groveling masses would have chosen the harshest laws against the corrupt. Extremist views?

Then, why do we still have life sentences for those who commit a single murder? Why did we try in the Special Court of Sierra Leone RUF leader Issa Sesay, and sentenced him to life imprisonment? Why should we joke with this cancer, this tape worm, this “RUFistic rebel” called corruption?

Yes, the last thing on this matter: if we are serious about “rebranding” Sierra Leone, we must be dead serious about waging war on corruption – using imaginative local methods.

(I wrote this article on Unexplained Wealth in 2009, when I was head of the Public Affairs and Tax Education unit in the National Revenue Authority [NRA]. Technically, I was head of the unit in the NRA, where I had started off in 2003 as Assistant Commissioner; but, in reality, I was heavily marginalized, with absolutely no powers. That was the mode of some of the APC government’s ethnic supremacists when they could not find a good reason to sack a Southeasterner. In my case, I had twice being protected from their high handedness by former President Ernest Bai Koroma.

Repetition is inculcation, thinkers on the mind state. George Orwell’s book, “1984”, dramatizes the power of repetition to brainwash anyone, or, to get an entire country to believe anything.

“1984” was published in 1949, four years after the end of the Second World War. The Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, who triggered that war that resulted in about 70 million people dead, had started off through his intense and hypnotic speeches convincing Germans that Jews in Germany and Europe were part of a conspiracy to keep Germany weak and subjugated; and were behind the economic doldrums Germany found itself in during the 1930s. Hitler got many ordinary Germans to believe in his concept of “The Final Solution” – the mass murder of Jews.

Subsequently, some six million Jews were arrested, tortured in gruesome scenarios, and murdered between 1939 and 1945. George Orwell’s book was to remind humanity that what happened in Nazi Germany could be reenacted anywhere in the world.

In the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Hutu extremists reenacted “1984”, as they used broadcast radio to brainwash ordinary Hutus that their Tutsi compatriots were “cockroaches” who should be murdered without any compunction. In nine months in 1994, ordinary Hutus used cutlasses and sticks to brutally murder about one million Tutsis, and the few Hutus who tried to protect them. The chilling lesson of 1984 was sent to humanity.

Positive or negative messages can be injected into a populace in any society through the potency of repetition. So, why not use this power to inculcate positive messages into people?

In your office or school or college or ataya base, randomly ask people about the “Unexplained Wealth” clause in the ACC Act. Or, ask how many people others know who have been tried and convicted using that law. It is likely that 98% of those asked won’t know anything about the “Unexplained Wealth” law.

As some teachers in public schools grow restive over the past week and demanded increased salaries, part of the solution to the teachers’ demand is the Unexplained Wealth clause being affected. Grand Corruption in Sierra Leone has meant that part of the money government should use to pay thousands of teachers livable wages would be stolen by about 200 senior government officials. This act is ‘murder-by-attrition’. When the masses whose children would never get quality education because of the thieving attitude of a few senior government officials…acquiesce to the Grand Corruption of the about one percent elite, they agree to ‘suicide-by-attrition’.

Read this article again. Its message includes a postulate on the inadequacy of the law on Unexplained Wealth. It tries to urge the populace to lobby their parliamentarians to make tougher laws against corruption. It is not a partisan issue..

When the Unexplained Wealth law was made in 2009, the APC Leader was President, and the APC had the majority in Parliament. Today, the SLPP Leader is President, and the SLPP has the majority in Parliament. Yet, it appears as if little has been done as regards the implementation of the Unexplained Wealth clause – yesterday and today. May, the law needs the massive support of the majority poverty-stricken masses who are the victims of the about 1% elite who steal their monies in government. Widely share this article. And ask questions.

I pause, Oswald Hanciles, The Guru