September 4, 2018
By Ishmael Sallieu Koroma
Riot police were deployed outside the university’s main entrance
Lecturers of Limkokwing University of Creative Technology in Sierra Leone have yesterday staged a peaceful protest for what they referred to as poor conditions of service.
Speaking to Concord Times, lecturer in the Faculty of Communications, Media and Broadcasting, Sheku Putka Kamara, complained that for two months now their salaries have not been paid on time and that their July salaries were paid in August.
“As I speak to you, we are yet to receive our salaries for August and its September already and you know what that means. We were employed by eXL Management, which is an employing agency and deployed at Limkokwing,’’ he said.
He added management had paid deaf ears to their concerns, adding that were determined to continue the strike action until their conditions of service are looked into.
Kamara claimed that apart from the late payment of salaries, they have noticed a huge disparity in the salaries of local staff and their foreign counterparts in the university.
The aggrieved lecturer continued that they have also noticed that the qualification and experience of local staff was far better than the foreign nationals.
‘’So, all of these issues tend to disturb us, and that’s why we are staging this protest .What we did is to close down the campus, we did not open any office today .We did write a letter and copied the Secretary to the President, Ministry of Labour and a host of other MDAs,‘’ he explained to our reporter.
He called on the Ministry of Higher Education and the Ministry of Labour and Industrial Relations to investigate eXL Management and Limkokwing so as to ensure that their conditions of service are reviewed in the best interest of local employees.
‘’Tomorrow again we are going to continue the peaceful strike until the matters are resolved,’’ Kamara said.
However, head of eXL Management Ola Bisi could not be reached for her comment on the issue. She didn’t respond to calls and text message sent to her mobile phone number.