According to the President of the Intermediate and Junior Staff Association, Henry Squire, this is not the first time they are suffering from such injustice. He disclosed that the college administration after informing them some time ago that their salary payment had been taken over by the Ministry of Finance to facilitate prompt payment every month; this has not been reflective; the reason why they decided to protesting in order for the anomaly to be corrected.

Our investigations reveal that it is now several weeks after the administration at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone met and discussed with intermediate and junior staffs, informing them of recent change with regard salary payment scheme which would henceforth be handled by the Ministry of Finance and that all the college administration needs to do was to forwarding the names of the college staffs to the Finance Ministry. However, weeks after this announcement, intermediate and junior staffs of the FBC are yet to receive up two months backlog salary, despite the promise by the college administration and this they say, is now affecting legitimate deductions on their salary which is also accumulating.

Several staffs at the college spoke of their plight and blamed the college administration for not taking them seriously. Others that spoke with AYV cast the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Ministry of Finance, saying the ministry had started paying staffs of other colleges and so why not staffs of FBC?

When contacted for the side of the Finance Ministry, the Public Relations officer, Ahmed Sesay said the Ministry is not to be blamed for the delay in salary payment to staffs of FBC. He explained that six colleges had initially been taken over for salary payment by the Finance Ministry and that the ministry had instructed the FBC authorities to send the names of their workers to the ministry so that they too would come under the scheme.

He lamented however that the college authorities should only have themselves to blame as they failed to comply in a timely manner to dispatch names of their workers to the ministry. He maintained however that since the last couple of weeks the FBC authorities were complying and assured that by the close of this week all modalities would have been put in place for the FBC staffs to receive what is due them.