Arrested Unemployed Teachers To Face Court On January 15

Nineteen graduate teacher trainees who were arrested on Monday, 13th January 2020 for unlawful picketing at the Ghana Education Service (GES) headquarters will be arraigned before court on Wednesday, 15^th January 2020.

The graduate teacher trainees from 2016, 2017 and 2018 batches of various Colleges of Education, were at the GES headquarters to demand postings.

But a Deputy Public Relations Official (PRO) for the Coalition of Unposted Trained Teachers, Wilberforce Appiah in a Citi News interview said they only acted on the message that invited them to the GES head office.

“You gave us a text message to come but you claim the text message was not from you. Meanwhile, all indications point to the fact that it is from you. You call for the police to come and arrest us. Now our leaders are being charged to go to court. We just want to say that we have not ended this,” he said.

Meanwhile, the General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers, GNAT, Thomas Musah has pledged to provide legal aid for the teachers who are to appear in court on Wednesday.

“What I heard them say is that, they were charged with unlawful assembly and I told the police that I will be there tomorrow where we will discuss these things in detail. We will provide them with lawyers. Our lawyers will go and speak to them and handle the case for us,” he said.

On January 9th, 2020, scores of graduate trainee teachers representing over 3,000 teacher trainees, picketed at the Ghana Education Service (GES) to demand postings.

The teachers who completed the various Colleges of Education in 2018 accused the GES of not posting them despite the completion of their mandatory national service and licensure certification.

However, the Ministry of Education in a statement has said that it currently cannot postgraduate trainee teachers who did not complete school in 2018 because it does not have the required financial clearance to cater for all of them.

---citinewsroom