Education ministry refers conditions of service issues to Fair Wages

The Education Ministry says it has referred conditions of service concerns raised by the country’s lecturers to the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission for consideration.

Education Minister, Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, revealed this Joy News on the sidelines of the launch of the University of Cape Coast Research Fund for graduate research into sanitation.

The Minister said while the Fair Wages and Salaries Commissions considers the issue of lecturers’ conditions of service her outfit’s preoccupation would be the establishment of the Research Fund for graduate research.

She said modalities for eligibility, processes for application among others have been drawn out for the National Research Fund.

“I left the University as a full professor and I know what it took to move from one slow step to another without any access to [any form of research fund assistance]…I have been Dean of graduate studies and I founded the School of Graduate Studies and Research and I know what my graduate students went through”, she said, stressing the need for a Research Fund for lecturers.

University teachers have been raising issues with the government’s refusal to pay their research and book allowance.

The University Teachers’ Association of Ghana (UTAG) and the Polytechnic Teachers’ Association of Ghana (POTAG) have both embarked on protracted strikes to press home their demand, but government has stuck to its ground.

Although the government says it is replacing the allowance with a National Research Fund, the lecturers do not seem to agree.

They say refusing to pay their research and book allowance - which has been what they have been receiving for many years - is a contravention of their conditions of service.

A committee working on modalities for the implementation of the National Research Fund has completed its work, paving the way for Cabinet and Parliament to finalise the setup of the fund.