Government, GES And MOE Playing Elimination Tactics With The Payment Of Teachers' Arrears

It's quite unfortunate that teachers in Ghana continue to receive embarrassing treatment from their employers as well as the government. Not long ago, three teacher unions embarked on a strike action to demand for what's termed as the legacy arrears.

The back and forth on the matter only ended on an agreement that the government is committed in paying those arrears with the assurance of already arrangements being made to ensure piecemeal payment. We were also made to understand that GES already has the data of those that they owe arrears and even prior to that, teachers had been made to submit their particulars on countless numbers of occasions.

It's shocking to note that information are circulating on social media including text messages sent to teachers belonging to teacher unions to resubmit their particulars for onward payment. We found this development and trend to be very disturbing and there's every indication that GES deliberately wants to avoid further payments. By inference, what it means is that if you refuse to submit your particulars, you are automatically eliminated from the list of arrears victims. GES and MOE wants to draw curtains on the arrears issue and the only way to deceive the public is to use this elimination tactics to end it all.

The question that comes to mind is that *'what has happened to the data GES claims they had in their possession'*. The three teacher unions which spearhead the strike also indicated that they had the data. So why should the teacher unions agree to resubmission of another data whilst they know that GES already has this information.

It's quite misleading and total bizarre for our union leaders to kowtow to the whims and caprices of our employer for this crafty posture to be used against teachers.

Current development defeat common logic and comes to affirm the conclusion that some elimination tactics had been activated by the government to deny rightful teachers of their sweat.

We also chide the three teachers for accepting this lame proposition and knowing very well that most teachers might not be previewed to such information, should have rejected the proposal outright and insisted on the data in the possession of IPPD GES.

This is the kind of teacher unions we glorify in this country. This action alone had come to reveal how incompetent our unions' leaders had been such that they could not come to terms with common logic of consistency and have allowed themselves for common sense to elude them.

We in the *Educate Teachers Forum (EDUTEF),* call on all teachers owe arrears to reject the request by unions and count it irrelevant as it's not borne out of genuine course. The request to submit another data will deny many teachers from receiving their arrears as against the reality.

Finally, we ask *'Will GES verify those data before payment? And by what means? With data they have in their possession or they will use the raw data submitted to do the payment?*

These arrears concern all teacher unions: *GNAT, NAGRAT, CCT-GH, ATAG, Innovative Teachers and TEWU* and not some. Why should GES extend an invitation to members of GNAT, NAGRAT and CCT alone? *Is it the arrears of teachers or teacher unions?*.

Something is wrong with the teaching profession and with their leaders.

More soon.....
*EDUCATE TEACHERS FORUM (EDUTEF)*
* [email protected] *