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The Southwest Zone of the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) of unity schools has threatened to sack PTA staff in its payroll, stop ongoing projects and voluntary services valued at N1.5 billion across the schools should the Federal Government sticks to its decision to scrap PTA levy.
The Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu had last week announced Federal Government’s order to unity schools to stop the collection of PTA levies while increasing school fees.
But in a communique issued by its Coordinator, Adebayo Olayide, at the end of its meeting in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital at the weekend, the PTA association in the SouthWest rejected the hike in fees, arguing that was “at variance with the free education policy of the Federal Government”.
The association pointed out that the funds raised from the levies were used to pay teaching and non-teaching PTA staff, sponsor scholarship for indigent students and repair or replace infrastructural facilities in the schools
The seven-point communique read in part:
“We are disturbed at the discordant tunes and utterances emanating from Federal Ministry of Education’s top hierarchy on the purported hike in school fees of unity schools.
“We are of the opinion that the current comments credited to the Hon. Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, to the effect that PTAs of unity schools should refrain from collecting the development levy should be given a second thought. Apart from the fact that the development levy is unanimously agreed upon by the PTA congress of each of the unity schools in Southwest Zone, prompted by a letter of request from the school authority for PTA’s assistance and justifying the need for the required facility, development projects in the schools across the zone are largely credited to this fee. For instance, the Hon. Minister of State for Education came to commission a gigantic hostel project of 1,200-bed space girls hostel built by the PTA at FSTC, Yaba, Lagos recently. The hostel project and other projects that were executed in other unity schools across the zone are in the range of hundreds of millions of Naira that were sourced from the so-called development levy.”