Monrovia – In a communication to House Speaker Dr. Bhofal Chambers and read in plenary on Thursday, July 5, the Honorable Lt. Col. Jimmy W. Smith called for the enactment into law “An Act Detaching the Monrovia Vocational Training Center (MVTC) from the Ministry of Youth and Sports to become an Autonomous Institute.”
Report by Gerald Koinyeneh, [email protected]
Rep. Smith said if the MVTC, considered to be the largest vocational training center in the country – is not given the appropriate attention and support by authorities of the Ministry of Youth and Sports, it will impede the quality education.
He furthered that granting the MVTC an autonomous status will greatly speed up its improvement and “give our students the necessary quality technical vocational education that are needed for rebuilding Liberia”.
“After a detailed research and analysis, I have come to the realization that this due to a bureaucratic bottleneck system at the Ministry of Youth and Sports; which does not allow the Director of MVTC or any administration to have access to fund generated by the institution least to talk about the payment of teachers’ salaries, except the Minister and his/her deputies at the Ministry of Youth and Sports,” Rep. Smite Wrote.
According to him, the institution under the supervision of the Ministry of Youths and Sports does not have an Act or board of directors; adding “least to talk about the possibility for sisterly relationship with other international technical vocational institutions.”
He alleged that under the MYS supervision, the administration of MVTC has no access to the school fund.
“The bottleneck system is to the extent that even the Director of MVTC and his deputies cannot approve a petty cash for hygienic purposes least to talk about purchasing of educational material for the institution, except the Minister of Youth and Sports and his/her deputies,” he alleged.
Meanwhile, the plenary unanimously voted in favor of River Gee County Rep. Alexander Poure’s motion to turn over the bill to the Committees on Youth and Sport, Education on Judiciary for review and to report back in two weeks.
It is co-sponsored by several lawmakers including Reps. Tibelrosa Tarponweh (MArgibi Dist.1), Samuel Enders (Mont. Dist.#6), and Joseph Somwarbi (Nimba Dist.#3).
There have been series of strikes by teachers and students of the institution over teachers’ unpaid salary and lack of basic equipment to enhance student learning on campus.
Speaking to FrontPage Africa during a strike action over unpaid salary in November 2017, the teachers complained that the Administration were unable to pay them their salaries and threatened to shut down the school if their plights were unattended.
“We have been very patient; we channeled our grievances first through the director of the MVTC but it has reached a point that he could not handle it. We formally wrote a letter to the HR of the Ministry of Youth and Sports that is responsible for MVTC. We wrote the letter and affixed our signatures to it and waited for another two months but there was no redress,” Henry K. Nyandibo, an aggrieved teacher, said.
Nyandibo, an Instructor in the Mechanical Department said back then: “We went to the Ministry of Youth and Sports (MYS) as instructors and met the Deputy Minister of Administration (DMA) of the Ministry. She assured us that in a week’s time, we were going to receive our four-month pay then, but we waited until we have entered the fifth month.”
“Our demand is for the school to pay our five-month salary now and secondly to review our contract sheets because our status in this school by documents is volunteer/ contractors with the payment plan of US$75,150, on the relationship with school.
The contracts, we signed is a trash and we want it to be reviewed in our presence by a legal counselor. If our demands are not met absolutely there will be no school in MVTC because we will not enter in class to teach,” he averred.