The Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) has directed striking teachers of Colleges of Education to call off their indefinite strike pending a resolution of their demands.
At an emergency meeting called at the behest of the commission and attended by representatives from the Conference of Principals of Colleges of Education (PRINCOF), the Finance Ministry, Controller and Accountant General’s Department and CETAG executives, Director General of GTEC, Prof Abdulai Jinapor said the core issue of migrating the teachers pay structure onto universities pay level has been resolved.
The Colleges of Education Teachers Association of Ghana (CETAG) withdrew all services in the 46 Colleges of Education following the government’s failure to honour the National Labour Commission’s Compulsory Arbitration award agreed upon by all the parties.
This award mandated key actions, including the migration of teaching staff in colleges of education onto the pay structure of their affiliate universities, a process that remains incomplete after 20 months.
Additionally, CETAG noted that the government had delayed paying one month’s basic salary as compensation for all-year-round work performed by staff in 2022. This payment, which was part of the arbitration award, is yet to be honoured to the 42 colleges of education.
But at the meeting to negotiate with the GTEC members to call of their strike, Prof Abdulai Jinapor said,
” In fact, for us as a commission, we think first the timing of the strike is wrong, it is not going to be productive, and in fact, for us, some may even view it as a blackmail in the sense that, as the president of GTEC rightly pointed, GTEC with government and all the different stakeholders involved in their migration have demonstrated serious commitment and action, and there’s empirical evidence to that. To the effect that the Controller and Accountant General’s Department has been working during the vacation to get members of not just GTEC but all the stakeholders within the Colleges of Education architecture to migrate onto the university’s structure. As a matter of fact, this is not happening just suddenly, but we had to start with Fair Wages and Salaries Commission; doing the mapping about one to two months at a very high cost born by GTEC, and today, if for some reason, even informed by the historical doubts that has characterized this process, CETAG wants to declare a Strike, we find it extremely, extremely unfortunate that you are withdrawing all services”.
According to him, the strike means a total shutdown of the institutions, and this is something that GTEC is totally against.
” So we’ve asked them to go back and reconsider their decision, at best, to call off the strike, and if for nothing at all, at the time that admissions are going on, whilst the results were released just two days ago for you to withdraw all your services, then it means you can’t do admissions”.
“Admissions are done with the input of faculty, health of department, admissions in terms of the minimum requirements to be admitted, health of departments, as well as faculty, are individuals who give counselling. If one student comes to us to choose courses, you should be the people to guide them. So if you say you’ve withdrawn all your work, then we find it extremely, extremely problematic”. He stressed.
On his part, the President of the Colleges of Education Teachers Association of Ghana, Maxwell Bunu said
” On behalf of my colleagues in the 46 Colleges of Education in Ghana, we’ve had a very fruitful deliberation with the commission. GTEC has actually shown or demonstrated sufficient commitment in resolving CETAG issues, especially migration.
However, CETAG made a point that we have to revert to the council and then brief the council on what we have observed and revert later on the next step”.
By Richard Bright Addo
