By ANAYO OKOLI
UMUAHIA—ABIA State Government has accepted to pay salaries and allowances of teachers in the mission schools it planned to hand over to original owners in August.
The government would also pay the pensions and gratuities of the teachers when the take over is executed.
Governor Theodore Orji disclosed this while meeting with proprietors of the mission schools who visited him at the Government House, Umuahia to discuss modalities for the hand over of schools.
Governor Orji had last year promised to handover the schools to their original missionary owners before they were taken over by government in 1970 after the civil war.
It will be recalled that an Executive Bill was presented to the Abia State House of Assembly in March last year to that effect and was passed into law in May to pave way for the exercise to take effect.
Receiving the Proprietors of Mission Schools led by its chairman and Catholic Bishop of Umuahia Diocese, Dr. Lucious Ugorji, the governor assured them that his administration would also undertake to pay other entitlements of the affected teachers.
Governor Orji however told the school proprietors that whatever promises he made on the issue would elapse till 2015, saying then, the proprietors would re-negotiate with the new governor.
Governor Orji assured that approved schools for the first phase of the exercise would be handed over to the missions in August.
Earlier the Bishop Ugorji, who led the group of other archbishops and bishops of various denominations to the visit, blamed the decay in the school system on morale decadence in the society and commended the governor for taking the initiative to return the schools.
Vanguard Nigeria