Vocational students boycott classes in protest

Lack of adequate attention to the demands of students and staff of the FCT School of Rehabilitation and Vocational Training Centre by the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) is threatening the smooth operation of the school. The school was established to educate and give vocational training to indigent persons and beggars who are seen to […]

Lack of adequate attention to the demands of students and staff of the FCT School of Rehabilitation and Vocational Training Centre by the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) is threatening the smooth operation of the school.
The school was established to educate and give vocational training to indigent persons and beggars who are seen to constitute nuisance in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
The school, commissioned in 2003 by the then FCT minister Malam Nasir Ahmad el-Rufa’i, became comatose two years later, precisely in 2005, after the former minister left office.
Most of the school’s students at the time, who were people arrested for violation of a law that banned street begging in the city center or engaged themselves in other undesirable act, such as hawking, child labour, or scavenging, found reason to leave the school unchallenged.
They were, after all, forced to enrol in the school, it was gathered.  Sources said that the unit was however reopened in 2011, following an agreement reached by the administration at the time with an organisation to run the school on contract basis.
The sources said that students’ welfare and payment of staff salary were taken care of by the organisation, while graduation of the students in five courses comprising tailoring, metal fabrication, ICT, electrical and leather works, fishing and poultry training acquisition which are compulsory, went smoothly for three consecutive years.
“The students would usually be empowered on graduation with machines and the sum of N100, 000 to kick-start their businesses and shun begging,” a staff of the school disclosed.
Teaching activities in the school usually start at 8:00am and end at 11:00am. After that, students continue with vocational training at workshops in the school.
When Daily Trust visited the school recently, students were seen protesting, vowing to continue boycotting classes.
They alleged that the FCT administration, which, they claimed, took them to the school forcefully, has neglected them by refusing to pay teachers’ salary and failing to graduate students who have spent two years in the school, instead of one year.
According to them, the neglect started since August last year, after the FCT Administration terminated its contract with the private management organisation. Investigation also revealed that graduation ceremony at the centre was carried out last in 2014.
The protesting students called on the FCTA to pay accumulated salary arrears of their teachers, and also equip the school’s workshops with functional machineries, claiming that most of the present ones were installed at the time the school was commissioned, and are no longer operational.
Effort to speak to the school principal, Bala Tsoho Musa, was not successful. He referred this reporter to the FCTA Social Development Secretariat saying he was not authorized to make public comments.
At the Secretariat, a director, Mrs Felicia Nwogwu, said that the present FCT Administration had terminated the management contract with the organization because it was financially injurious to the government. She said that the FCT Minister, Malam Muhammad Musa Bello, was concerned about the school and the plight of staff and students. She, however, said that the territory is currently suffering a decline in its income.