NAPO Insists Trainee Teachers Will Do National Service

The Education Minister, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh has stated that agitating trainee teachers will be made to undertake their national service despite their protests.

According to him, the trainee teachers would have to explain why they feel they should be exempted from undertaking their national service when other trained professionals undertake their mandatory national service.

“It is a fight I’ll love because you have to tell me why you are better than somebody else,” the minister said at the launch of a World Bank report in Accra.

Hundreds of unemployed teachers converged on the Obra Spot at Circle in Accra on Wednesday, to take part in a demonstration to demand postings from the government.

The teachers say they will not adhere to a directive from the government to post them as National Service personnel .

Some of the teachers who spoke to Citi News said they will resist any move to compel them to do the mandatory national service.

“Although we were supposed to be posted in September, we've been in the house since we completed school in July. But all that we hear is that we should go back and do national service although we have done our teaching practice,” he said.

But Matthew Opoku Prempeh said the trainee teachers cannot be employed permanently if they do not undertake their national service.

“I heard the teacher trainees say that ‘yes, we are going to do induction and probation’ but ‘we don’t want to do national service’, really? When we say your induction and probation period is the same as your national service period, why don’t you want to do it? Nurses do it, doctors do it, lawyers do it. Everybody who has gone through the tertiary system does national services. So everybody is going to do it. It is a fight I’ll love because you have to tell me why you are better than somebody else. If you don’t do your national service we don’t get to employ you. We are going to do it,” he said.