By: Nat Nyuan-Bayjay

Following weeks of a sit-in action by teachers of the Guthrie Rubber Plantation School System, the Ministry of Education has finally brought in relief by promising to pay them the three months of salaries that were past due.

Recently, teachers at the Guthrie Plantation School laid down their chalks in demand of the three months in salaries that were owed to them by the plantation.

Guthrie Rubber Plantations is one of the country’s largest rubber plantations spreading across two counties in Western Liberia, Bomi and Grand Cape Mount Counties. The Plantation is currently under the management of an interim management team from the country’s Agriculture Ministry following series of instabilities on the Plantations. The Government of Liberia, through the Ministry of Education, took over the management of the school in September, following the inability of the management team to properly run the school.

According to Boikai Sirleaf, a deputy minister of the Agriculture Ministry who heads the interim management team of Guthrie, the Ministry of Education will pay teachers of the Guthrie School System. The Minister of Education, Dr. Joseph Korto, however clarified that the teachers will be paid as public school teachers since the school has been placed under the Ministry of Education.

The latest mood will bring relief to at least 3,500 students (approximately 800 of them attending the only senior high school on the plantation-Guthrie Plantation School) who have been out of school across the plantation since the strike action by their teachers.

Under Pillar IV of the PRS, infrastructure and basic social services; “the government intends to build 240 new primary classrooms (40 primary schools) and 54 new secondary classrooms (4 schools), recruit and train qualified teachers by reopening three regional teacher training institutes to train between 600 to 1000 new teachers annually; and construct 105 teacher houses in hardship locations.”

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