Teacher Union Strike Declaration – The Gimmick Of Leaders’ Frustrations

Attention all Ghanaian pre-tertiary teachers! I understand four teacher unions called TEACHER UNIONS had declared strike effective today Monday 4^th July 2022. Many reasons have been given for this declaration and among the reasons are:

(a) Skyrocketing inflation of 27% affecting food and commodity prices coupled with the 4% and 7% increase in salary in 2021 and 2022 respectively.

(b) Inept attitude of the government relative to the call for COLA. They claimed the government had refused to listen to urgent calls despite several forums to raise the concern. To them, the government has been adamant and that is the time to show that they are angry.

(c) Teachers are excruciating under the current hardship of poverty. They say the pain of poverty is so much that it has left the members of the teaching fraternity and the educational workers in an unsuspicious state of affairs. They said their members cannot bear the hardship. Subtly, they said they reject the inequality of the pubic sector wage.

(d) Consequently, they have decided to embark on strike action effective 4^th July 2022.

I want every to know that this strike declaration if not political then is pure incompetence and ineptitude on the part of the union leaders. This strike cannot get the government on its knees once the leaders of the unions have used the path of politics to battle their interests instead of their members.

(1) Teachers must be concerned about the attitude of their leaders when they claim the government has not listened to their call. The first thing that comes to mind is “Did the leaders send any petition to the government?” and “What was the response of the government?”. It is clear from their press that they never met the government as leaders to get his attention. They were only waiting for the government to respond to the noise in the media. THIS IS PURE PRIDE AND POLITICS. Because they claim the government did not respond to their call on many occasions that the issue of COLA had been raised.

(2) Since when did the TEACHER UNIONS get to know that teachers and educational workers are wobblings in poverty? I am even wondering. Since day one, in every strike, these leaders point to poverty as the pain teachers are going through. This time round they are saying that poverty is harder than the previous ones. Let us pause and ask them a simple question “If union leaders know that poverty has been the portion of teachers, what have they done about it? Is COLA the solution to our poverty?

(3) The leaders also clandestinely said that there is inequality in the public sector wage bill and they ever so reject it. HOW? You reject inequality of salaries in a press conference for it to become equal or what? What have these leaders done over the years to bridge the GAP of the inequality in public salaries? NOTHING! These are the elements calling on teachers to follow them on strike.

I feel ashamed that I am a teacher and the kind of leaders who claimed they are leading us to better our conditions. Well for me, I think MUSA of GNAT and Carbonu of NAGRAT are just nurturing their political ambitions and some of these postures will give them leverage. Or they have missed government engagement and fat brown envelopes and they want to lick some milk. If not, all the reasons given for the strike have been with teachers from time immemorial and COLA cannot get the government on its knees with a flimsy strike.

I SHALL RETURN……

Evans Davis

(Teachers’ Author Series)

[email protected]