The Teachers' Promotions Crisis

It is with deep sorrow and regret that I chronicle this article. "A country that does not recognises its heroes, is not worth dying for". The teachers' promotion debacle has pressed a panick bottom in the lives of many a young teachers. There is every reason worry. This incident has unreservedly provoked the rank and file of the Ghanaian teacher. We deserve better treatment than the way we are being treated. Enough of the disrespect! Enough of the discrimination and selective treatment! Teachers must stamp our feet on the ground and conquer this battle.

It is deeply worrying and so demoralising watching a professionally trained teacher weep uncontrollably in open camera for promotion. It is brazely unfathomable why the teaching profession is still being relegated to the background upon all the strides and milestones it has chalked in this country. When will government stop paying lips services to the Ghanaian teacher?

A lot of things are not going on well with the Ghanaian teacher. There is so much blatant and advertent disregard for the Ghanaian teacher! There is so much disrespect for the Ghanaian teacher! And there is a grave discrimination against the Ghanaian teacher! Why must it always be the teacher? Why should the teacher go through such ordeal just to be promoted? A promotion that will cushion the teacher's salary with about Ghc100, they must weep for it. A promotion which is rightly due them too? What kind of country are we living in? Teachers must begin speak up with one voice.

All the professions in this country are taught by the teacher. Yet the teacher has become so vulnerable and poor that government and duty bearers have little regnition for its output. How then do you expect teachers to give out their best? A country where there no motivation and recognition for teachers definitely has a herculean problem. Development in such country will always hit a hard rock. Teachers in Ghana spend our personal salaries to rent rooms, buy motor bikes, cars, computers and virtually everything to enable us do our work. This is different in other professions in the same country. Anyway, teachers saw those professions and decided to become teachers. I know somebody will definitely say if I don't.

In spite of all these ill and dehumanising treatment meted out to teachers, parents, government, leadership and duty bearers still have the termerity to come out and rebuke teachers for students abysmal performance. Teachers are illed-resourced yet government expects us to perform magic. It is no surprising that education is speedly retrogressing in our part of the world. No wonder there is a sharp rise in social vices in the country.

In fact, the inconsistency in the communication between duty bearers and the newly promoted teachers is enough a justification that there is urgent need for the improvement of teachers' conditions of service. The aged will say that when a fish is due to rot, it starts from the head. Analysing the communication between the promotion department of Ghana Education Service and the teachers, it is conspicuously clear that there is everything wrong with communication in G E S. These are some of the repecursions the country will suffer for the consistent denigration and disrespect for teachers.

How on earth would such a professional body trade with the emotions and feelings of senior teachers in such an awkward manner? Since when has the adjective, successful metamophorsied to mean unsuccessful? You congratulated somebody on being successful in an exams he sat and within no time you make a U-turn to state that the person was unsuccessful in the same exams he sat for. And you think they should accept it hook-line-sinker? Where is the logic here?

Teachers must not allow this to continue! Teachers must rise up! Teachers must unite! Teachers must know the dichotomy between politics and profession. Teachers must undo partisan politics in the profession and work collectively and in unison to carve an enviable niche for ourselves and the profession.

Teachers needs to re-strategise to speak with one voice. It is improper and a betrayal for the rest of teachers to sit aloof and watch a cross section of colleague teachers being treated with disdain. Other professions would have joined their colleagues to fight and win this battle. Unfortunately, it is the Ghanaian teacher again. So the rest sit down and watch our colleague teachers being cheated, ill-treated and completely disregarded and denied what is rightfully due them.

Now, such maltreatment and wanton disregard for teachers has given birth to high blood pressure (BP) in the lives of some of them. What are they going to do now? I was so so sad watching this woman narrating her ordeal in open camera. These are people who dying for the country yet their efforts are not appreciated. How then will the students take them serious? When the students witness how teachers are treated by government, it creates a wierd impression in there minds. The debilitating consequence of this is the replication of disregard and disrespect for teachers by these students born out of the pictorial unusefulness of created by leadership.

This incident must be a turning point for teachers. We have been relegated to the background for far too long because we are so much engulfed in partisan politics. Teachers of recent times, cannot speak out our grievances for fear of victimisation by political leaders. Teachers can no longer unanimously voice our challenges because of our deep seated political affiliations. Headteachers and their staffs are being inflicted with avoidable High Blood Pressure(BP) and other ailments because of a monster called Culture of Silence. Let us rise up and speak out to safe our profession for no political party is greater than the teaching profession. We taught them all. Why should teachers throw our arms in dispair and allow government to take us for a ride? We can fight it! Let Us Start! YES, WE CAN!

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