TTAG Dares Gov’t To Determine The Fate Of Teacher Trainees Before June

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The leadership of the Teacher Trainees Association of Ghana (TTAG) - Western and Central regional sector has charged gov’t to as a matter of urgency declare publicly before June 1 2016, plans it is embarking upon towards immediate remuneration of teacher trainees who are due for posting into various schools within the country by August after having removed allowances due them earlier.

The association is equally calling on government to be responsible for payment of the full cost of feeding fees of teacher trainees in colleges of education as part of earlier resolution that government should solely be held accountable for it.

Several key issues raised by the leadership in a release copied to the media on Friday exudes gross insensitivity on part of government in solving such problems which has compounded astronomically begging for an answer to no avail.

Below is the full statement contained in the recent press release copied to the media.

.TTAG - WEC SECTOR challenges government to explicitly spell out the fate of teacher trainees before June 1^st June 2016.

The leadership of the Teacher Trainees' Association of Ghana - Western and Central Sector is calling on the government of Ghana to come out explicitly and tell teacher trainees and the Ghanaian populace the measures being put in place to ensure that newly trained teachers who will be posted in August this year are paid their salaries immediately after their posting, since they are not taking any allowance.

It would be recalled that, the teacher trainees allowance has been cancelled since the beginning of the 2013/2014 academic year and any attempt made by the trainees to ensure the reverse of this unpopular policy has proved futile. Students in the public colleges of education have gone through hell in pursuing their dream of becoming teachers to train the future leaders of our dear country, Ghana. With barely two months to complete the programme, what is the fate of the final year teacher trainee? Their out program which received no support from the government has already burdened the final year teacher trainees with heavy costs of rent, utility bills, teaching and learning materials, just to mention but a few of them.

Even though the leadership made several attempts to catch the eye of the government and other stakeholders, all their efforts remained a fiasco. Teacher trainees can confidently say that, government has not made any advancement to ensure that newly trained teachers for the 2016/2017 academic year are captured on government payroll immediately after their posting. Life was and has always been very tough for teacher trainees during their out-programme even as some live in groups of three or four and share the responsibility of rent charges, utility bills, and even cook together. The final year teacher trainee is therefore left with no option than to also worry about how tougher life is going to be after his or her posting.

Now the big and most worrisome question staring at the faces of final year teacher trainees is: how and where they are going to get money to cater for their rent, the transportation of their belongings and their livelihood after they've been posted to their new stations? Which landlord will accept that we stay in his or her house till the time we start receiving our salaries? We can't simply go through this embarrassment. Even our predecessors who were still taking the trainees' allowance after their posting were complaining of economic hardship, how much more we non-allowance beneficiaries? All that we hear is, "it's in the pipeline". Till when is it getting out of the pipeline? Is that pipeline really not chocked?

We are therefore by this release petitioning the government to put in place visible measures to register level 300 teacher trainees at the Controller and Accountant General's department immediately, so we can receive our salaries as early as possible when we are posted.

We also wish to remind the government that we have a semester's feeding grant in arrears and as stated earlier, we will complete our programme in two months’ time (In the month of July). We therefore plead with the government to release the grant by the end of June so that we can access it before the end of our programme in the colleges of education.

Finally, there is this rumor that newly trained teachers will do one year internship before being absorbed into mainstream teaching. If it is true, then we want to tell government and the whole Ghana that we didn't commit any crime to suffer unfortunate hardship so therefore we can't simply take this. What offence have we committed?

Again, we wish to reiterate that the feeding of teacher trainees in the colleges of education remains the sole responsibility of the government, and that, our earlier resolution that no trainee should pay the feeding fee, still holds and we cannot undergo any internship.

In conclusion, all that we seek for is a prompt payment of the salaries and feeding grant of newly trained teachers and teacher trainees respectively.

We would also like to state categorically and emphatically that TTAG is a non-partisan organization and must be treated as such.

TTAG - We Mean Well!!
President
Abbey Shadarch
0242705545
Vice President
Ernestina Serwaa Adomako
0543314193
Secretary
Donkor Felix
0248006969
Vice Secretary
Flicity Owooh
0544810469
Women Commissioner
Bondzie Patience
0241463851
Financial Secretary
David Sarfo- Kantanka
0244448075
Coordinator
Oduro Yeboah Francis
0544481049
Organizer
Otchere David Akuetteh
0545387767
Vice Organizer
Otoo Elizabeth
0279238437
Administrator
Atia Kofi
0245318739
P.R.M
Annan Gideon
0542894911