Re-engaged tutors unpaid

About 2,600 teachers who were re-engaged into the Ghana Education Service (GES) last year have not received their salaries.

The teachers are those who had been with the service and were reengaged at both the basic and the senior high School levels after periods of leave of absence and leave without pay.

Confirming the plight of the teachers to the Daily Graphic, the Head of the Integrated Personnel Payroll Database (IPPD) Unit of thee GES, Mr Michael Inkoom, said the non-payment of the affected teachers was not the fault of the GES but the result of an embargo placed on the recruitment of staff last year.

He said the embargo was introduced last-year as part of efforts to let ministries, departments and agencies (MDA's) to cut down cost, explaining that it affected about 2,000 teachers and other staff members recruited by their heads of institutions.

"When we are told the ban is lifted, we will pay them," he emphasised, adding that those affected included teachers who went on leave without pay and those who went on leave of absence.

An Assistant Director at the Public Relations Unit of the GES, Mr Paul Krampah, said heads of schools had been informed of the ban when the directive came.

On the issue of salary arrears for teachers who completed their training in 2007, Mr Inkoom said the IPPD II was currently being upgraded to address the problem, saying that the problem was not with the software but customising it to suit the Ghanaian situation.

Some teachers who completed their training in 2007 and a few of those who completed in 2005 are also yet to be paid their salary arrears after they have been placed en the correct salary scale.

But Mr Inkoom indicated that the problem was a technical one which started "when we moved from the IPPD I to IPPD II in October, 2006".

He said although the system could capture salaries it could not capture arrears.

He said the issue of arrears did not affect only GES staff but the entire public service, saying the staff of the Controller and Accountant-General's Department were having sleepless nights trying to rectify the problem once and for all.

"Both the GES and the CAGD are working feverishly to solve the arrears problem," he stated.

For his part, a Deputy General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), Mr John Nyoagbe, said the association would ensure that the affected teachers were paid their arrears.