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Apologize for your political decision, not the teachers, Yaw Opoku Mensah fires at GES over salary delay Press Release

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By: Jennifer Frimpong Wiredu

A press release issued by the Ghana Education Service (GES) on June 24 has sparked a wave of outrage and disappointment among newly posted teachers and drawn sharp political criticism from a former Deputy Spokesperson for the Ministry of Education, Yaw Opoku Mensah.

GES, in the statement, sought to address concerns raised by a section of newly posted teachers who submitted a petition at the Service’s headquarters on June 23 2025. The teachers, most of whom have been at post since September 2024, are yet to receive salaries, with many still lacking Staff IDs nearly a year later.

In the release, GES attributed the delay to a combination of expired financial clearance, documentation challenges, and what it described as recruitment anomalies uncovered during a nationwide validation exercise in March 2025.

The Service also referred to “irregularities” reportedly captured in recent audit reports, hinting that not all recruited teachers may have been properly vetted.

But those explanations have drawn the ire of education stakeholders and, more notably, Former Deputy Spokesperson for the Ministry of Education, Yaw Opoku Mensah,  who has accused GES of deflecting blame and politicizing the issue.

“Apologize for your political decision that has caused this undue delay rather than claiming to justify the delayed payment,” Opoku Mensah charged.

His statement, which has since gone viral, has been embraced by many of the affected teachers who feel the GES has misrepresented their situation.

For the teachers, the claim that they may be part of any recruitment irregularities is not only inaccurate but deeply insulting. They insist they were posted through standard procedures after graduating from accredited Colleges of Education and accuse the GES of trying to save face at their expense.

According to one of the petitioning teachers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, “This is not about audits. This is about a system that failed to pay us after we were rightfully posted and have been working for months. We’re being punished for political and bureaucratic failures.”

The GES, in its statement, indicated that letters had been sent through the Minister for Education to the Ministry of Finance, requesting an extension of expired financial clearance to enable payments. While they assured teachers that a budgetary allocation had been made in the 2025 budget, many say that offers little consolation after nearly a year without pay.

Critics say the statement lacked ownership and failed to address the real source of the problem  the inability of GES and the Ministry of Finance to coordinate timely processing of clearances, a failure that has left thousands of teachers stranded.

Mr. Opoku Mensah’s intervention has refocused attention on the political dimensions of the crisis, suggesting that the issue has more to do with poor policy execution than recruitment anomalies. With frustration mounting and trust in the system eroding, the call for accountability is growing louder.

For now, the teachers are still waiting not just for their salaries, but for honesty and respect.

Read Copy of The Full GES Press Release Below

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