One hundred and sixty-five non-professional primary school teachers have been sacked in Katsina State.
The teachers were sacked by the State Universal Basic Education Board, SUBEB, for failing to acquire the National Certificate of Education, NCE.
NCE has since 1980 been the minimum qualification required for teachers that teach in primary schools in the country.
There was, however, effort last year by the Federal Government to raise the minimum teaching qualification to a university degree.
It was learnt the affected teachers are among the 731 that were employed by the former administration in the state.
It was gathered that the sacking of the teachers was part of the current administration’s effort to sanitise the education sector.
According to a source, the sacked teachers didn’t possess the minimum teaching qualification and thus cannot deliver quality education to pupils.
He said the teachers were recruited in May last year, and that their sack was part of a recommendation by a committee set up to screen their credentials.
The spokesperson of the board, Garba Abubakar, who confirmed the sack, said he didn’t have the exact number of those sacked.
Abubakar said those sacked includes security men as well as other category of staff working in some of the primary schools.
He, however, said that the state government had settled eight months salary arrears to the affected staff.
Meanwhile, no less than 9,000 youths in Katsina State are to be gainfully employed through a job creation effort by the state government.
Governor Aminu Bello Masari who stated this over the weekend, said the jobs would be created before the end of the year.
Masari was speaking when he received the Emir of Daura, Alhaji Farouk Umar Farouk in his office.
The governor said his administration would create small businesses to minimise unemployment as well as enhance economic status of teeming youths.
He said loans would soon be disbursed to unemployed youths and training given to them through training colleges to make them self reliant.
He said the current state government would focus more on building the people than spending money on unimportant capital projects.
Masari, however, lamented of possible limitations in implementing its policies and programmes due to shortage of funds.
He said the state was not generating enough internally, while allocation from federation account had dropped by 60 percent.
Earlier, Emir of Daura, Alhaji Farouk called on the state government to prevail on the Federal Government to complete the construction of the Sabke Dam.
The emir said the project had been abandoned since 1999 and that its completion would lead to the socio-economic development of the communities around the dam.
He also called for the desilting of the Dabiran dam to boost irrigation farming in his Daura Emirate area.
He assured the state government that traditional rulers would enlighten the people to help improve the state’s internally generated revenue.
