Three teacher unions have threatened to strike should government fail to heed a February 29 deadline for payment of all outstanding monies owed them.
The Vice President of NAGRAT, Angel Carbonu said in an interview with Kwaku Owusu Adjei on Si Me So on Kasapa 102.3 FM that government has violated a roadmap activated in November 2015 to have their arrears facilitated, hence the strike action.
“We have written a letter to the Labour Commission informing it of our intention to engage in an industrial action as a result of the fact that they’re reneging on the agreement that we had with them last year-relating to the unpaid arrears that are supposed to be paid to teachers including recruitment, car maintenance allowance, transfer grants and promotion arrears that have not been paid with some spanning 3-4 years.
According to the unions- the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), Ghana National Association of Teachers, (GNAT), and the Coalition of Concerned Teachers (CCT) attempts to get government pay the outstanding salary arrears have failed.
“We have written to them severally and we’re only experiencing a merry-go-round in the kind of response we demand from them.You cannot convert excuses to be some effort;there will only be effort when those response culminate in payment. So long as the responses do not culminate in payment, they still remain excuses. We can only believe in something that is tangible and if the issue has not gotten to me tangibly how then do we believe it?
“We expect payment to be done by the end of this month-if it is not done we’ll advise ourselves accordingly.We are going to organize series of press conferences tomorrow, and we’ll be rolling out the roadmap to the public very soon.
The unions are demanding the payment salary arrears of the 2013 and 2014 batches of newly recruited teachers, teachers on promotion and others who were reinstated or re-engaged, and also outstanding transfer grants and allowances for deserving teachers.
