The Impact Crew: Newly Posted Teachers Pickets Today at GES Headquarters

Newly posted teachers numbering over sixteen thousand from the various colleges of education who were posted last year pickets on the 6th February, 2017 at the Ministry of Finance (MoF), Ghana Education Service Headquarters and Controller and Accountant General Department to mount a pressure on them to attend to their dire situation.

The said teachers who were unlucky to be trained under the Mahama led administration which abolished the allowance of the teacher trainees are now finding life very difficult at the remote areas where they were been posted to last year. The previous government promised to pay them their salaries just after postings since the allowance was to cater for them after postings were no longer in existence but that were only one of the fallacies of a then deputy minister.

The year group has made several demonstrations and picketing from the genesis of the scrapping of the teacher trainees allowance, unpaid feeding grant to colleges of education only to mention a few under the previous Mahama led administration which according to the newly posted teachers only came as a sadist to the year group.

They are with the hope that their thumbs was very instrumental in retiring that ill-government and bringing on board a government that will listen to their plea. Since September last year, the newly posted teacher hasn’t been treated fairly and this has raised a lot of questions whether they will be paid commencing from the month of February or not. Despite the fact that the newly trained teachers have still not been paid they are working tirelessly to get their pupils to the next level and doing their very best to impart knowledge to the pupils.

The year group is calling on the Ministry of Education (M.o.E) to at least abolish the three (3) month arreas policy and compensate them for the allowance if possible. Since the teacher trainees allowance was abolished in 2013 and the 2016 year group of teacher trainees was badly affected, it has worsen the problems of the young teachers as they haven’t been paid a dime since September last year.

A group calling itself the Coalition of newly trained teachers is begging the Minister of Education who is in the person of Hon. Dr. Mathew Opoku Prempeh to support them because their mother associations which are the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), Coalition of Concerned teachers and National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) are only behaving like women in their early seventies. To them the associations are only waiting penitently only to deduct the teacher when they are fully placed on payroll.

The picketing is to take of on the 6th February 2017 at the Ministry of Education, Ghana Education Service and Controller and Accountant General Department respectively at exactly 8:00 am prompt. The association will also want to draw the attention of the government to their members who had referrals during their stay on campus. The group is calling on the government to put such teachers on allowance until they redeem themselves come September this year.

The association is also calling on the government not forget the clearance of the teachers who were not cleared by the previous government due to technical error with their results confirmation, there are therefore reminding the government to consider that in the March budget. Let all join-hands and fight for a common right.The converging place to kick start the picketing will be Accra sports Stadium.

Akwasi Brobbey
(Senior writer and editor at TIC)
[email protected]
0548412192 / 0266175686