Teachers will go on strike if the government doesn’t comply with their demands
The government has twenty-four hours to stop pre-tertiary teacher unions from going on strike across the country.
The union leadership claims that there are growing agitations among the more than 300,000 teachers in the country and that the government needs to take immediate action.
On April 24, 2024, in Accra, Thomas Musah Tanko, the General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), had an exclusive interview with Daniel Opoku, the labour correspondent of 3news.
The sluggish progress of the ongoing negotiations has infuriated the pre-tertiary teacher unions, who have called off their strike.
The teachers’ leadership claims that the issues they brought up with the administration are still unanswered.
Teachers in underprivileged communities have not received their basic compensation of twenty percent from the unions for the past fifteen years.
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Additionally, they are requesting that teachers receive a GHC 1,200 annual professional development stipend, but the government has not yet complied.
“Currently, the continuous development all the gains have been eroded and government must do something about it, government must also deal with extra-curricular allowance,” Mr Tanko said.
The government’s foot-dragging during the negotiations is upsetting the pre-tertiary teacher unions, who are agitated as a result.
The government should move quickly to stop any strikes, according to Mr. Tanko, who spoke on behalf of the teaching unions.
“The teachers have gotten to their elastic limit. Please we are sounding a warning that don’t take this thing lightly, we as leaders have sounded the warning, if managers take it lightly they should blame themselves,” he asserted.
He was also disturbed that those who attend the negotiations from the Finance Ministry do not have the mandate to take binding decisions.
“The Ministry of Finance seem not to appreciate the magnitude of the case, the person they send cannot talk and that is affecting the negotiations,” he explained.
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