Salaries of CETAG members frozen: GTEC appeals for return to classroom
The salaries of about 2,000 striking teachers of the colleges of education have been frozen for July 2024.
The measure, according to the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC), is at the instance of the Ministry of Education due to the teachers’ failure to adhere to calls to call off their strike.
Members of the Colleges of Education Teachers Association of Ghana (CETAG) have been on strike since May, 2024 over their dissatisfaction with their conditions of service.
A letter by Nicholas Ameyaw of GTEC, on behalf of the Director-general of GTEC, Prof. Ahmed Jinapor, dated Monday, July 22, 2024, directed the Controller and Accountant General’s Department to take immediate action regarding the measure.
Validation of July salaries
“You are by this letter requested to stop the salaries of all teaching staff of the Colleges of Education except for the College Principals for July. 2024,” part of the letter stated. “College Principals are not to validate the July 2024 salaries of all teaching staff,” it further stated.
But throwing more light on the issue, the Deputy Director-General of the GTEC, Professor Francis K.E. Nunoo, explained that an updated statement had been released and that some of those tutors and principals who were at post to ensure that properties of the colleges were safeguarded would be exempted and paid their July salary.
He pleaded with the striking tutors to call off the strike and return to the classroom, and gave an assurance that once they suspended their strike , the decision to freeze their salaries would be reversed and their salaries processed and paid.
“If they go back to the classroom, we will suspend the letter instructing the CAGD not to validate their salaries and they will get their salaries and their families will smile home happily,” he added, reminding them that per the labour laws of Ghana, it was not permissible for a negotiation to begin while a strike was ongoing.
Meeting
Prof. Nunoo hinted that the Minister of Education would be holding a meeting with the national executive of CETAG today, and was hopeful that at the end of that meeting, the tutors would have rescinded their decision and returned to the classroom.
He said at that meeting, the minister would demonstrate the commitment of the government to end the strike by showing them the efforts put in so far to meet their demands.
Prof. Nunoo said the government sympathised with them and understood their concerns as was evident in the extensive engagements, stressing, “we are ready and committed to solving the issue.”
He called for calm in the tertiary education front, especially within the colleges of education, so that teaching and learning could move forward so that children in the third generation could be educated.
Background
Giving a background to the strike, Prof. Nunoo, took the Daily Graphic down memory lane and narrated the various stages the leadership had reached with the government representatives since 2022.
“We had several engagements with them, both the Ministry of education and the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations. Additionally, all the state agencies involved in salaries have been engaged.
“It isn’t like we have not engaged them, but it is that they have stuck to their guns that they want this, they want that,” he explained. He said their issue ended up at the National Labour Commission where they were granted three arbitration awards covering Book and Research Allowance and a demand to be at par with their colleagues in public universities.
Prof. Nunoo explained that based on the three arbitration awards, the various agencies mandated by the government to deal with salaries had to engage them and “so far, government had done the paper work, we have processed them and it is now with the Ministry of Finance for payment,” for a one-off research allowance for 2023 and the Book and Research allowance for 2024.
He said though the Minister of Education had the goodwill to grant them their request, the law had to be applied and not a blanket migration.
Conversion
Prof. Nunoo explained that it all started with the conversion of all colleges of education into tertiary institutions, where the lecturers requested that they wanted to be treated like those in public universities.
He, however, stressed that to be a lecturer in the university, the requirement was that the person must hold a PhD, “but over 90 per cent of them are Master’s holders and a few of them are PhD holders.”
He announced that a committee had been set up to look at the parity to identify those who had a PhD and a few of them who had extensive experience to be moved to the lecturer and senior lecturer levels.
Source: Graphiconline