GTEC directive puts university administration under siege - GAUA warns

Ghana Association of University Administrators (GAUA) has called on government and relevant stakeholders to uphold the sanctity of academic freedom by enforcing the compliance with legal documents of the nation’s public universities.

In a press release signed and issued by Dr Mrs Beth Offei-Awuku, National President for GAUA, she averred that some recent directives of the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) seeking to adversely vary established conditions of service for Non-Teaching Senior Members make it clear that university administration is under siege.

According to GAUA, these gravely worrying behaviours of the Regulator in dishonouring statutory provisions of legally binding documents are most distasteful and an affront to the academic freedom of these autonomous public institutions.

GAUA also pointed out that there is overregulation and virtual micro-management of the public universities by the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC), whilst GTEC is in blatant disregard for legal documents like the universities’ Acts of Parliament, the Statutes, and Policies governing the Ghanaian universities.

In that release, it pointed out that some government appointees to the university councils, and politicians in the jurisdiction of some public universities have been noted to exert excessive political influence on the administrative structures of the public universities without recourse to the Acts, Statutes, and Policies governing the establishment of the nation’s public universities.

This trend, it noted, is very worrying and needs urgent solution if the rule of law is anything to continue to live for.

GAUA again calls on the GTEC to halt the implementation of its directives of Office Holding Allowances in the public universities forthwith, as the process is awash with discrimination, arbitrariness and unfair labour practices.

"The implementation of this obnoxious GTEC directive on Officeholders have resulted in a number of GAUA Members losing their allowances while the complaints at the National Labour Commission (NLC) are still pending. The GTEC directive on officeholders should stop immediately until a proper implementation framework is agreed on by all stakeholders,” GAUA stated.

GAUA therefore issued a notice that if the GTEC directive is not stopped by 1st January 2024, its members will be compelled to lay down their tools.