TEWU withdraws services from today

Members of the Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU) in the Ghana Education Service (GES) say they will withdraw their services effective today, January 5, 2022 over the non-payment of their Continuous Professional Development (CPD) allowance since 2020.

They said although teachers had been paid their allowance, non-teaching staff, made up of TEWU members, had not been paid in spite of several reminders to the government.

“We, therefore, wish to inform the government and its agencies, parents and the Ghanaian public that as schools reopen today, January 5, 2022, they should not expect any of the non-teaching staff to be at post.

“These would include but not limited to the domestic bursars, matrons, cooks, pantry hands, labourers, cleaners, administrators, accountants, librarians, logistics and supply officers, internal auditors, etc.,” the General Secretary of TEWU, Mr Mark Dankyira Korankye, said at a press conference in Accra yesterday.

Disappointment

According to him, the Minister of Education in 2020 announced the approval of CPD allowance to both teaching and non-teaching staff of the (GES); GH¢ 1,200.00 for teaching staff GH¢ 600 for non-teaching staff.

“What is the crime of the non-teaching staff that, since the announcement of the payment of the CPD allowance, the leadership of TEWU has been following up to ensure that our members benefit from it? All our efforts have not yielded any results. In making the payment of this allowance, professional teachers were paid GH¢ 1,200.00 and non-professional teachers were paid GH¢ 800.00, thus leaving the non-teaching staff completely out,” he explained.

To make matters worse, Mr Korankye said in March last year, the President, in the State of the Nation’s Address (SONA) presented to Parliament, announced that he had paid CPD allowance to both teaching and non-teaching staff of the GES and that the announcement by the President of the land caused a lot of agitation among its members.

“If payment of this allowance has been made, why is it that non-teaching staff have not received any? Could it be that our Union leaders are not pushing hard enough for this to be paid to our members or someone has collected the money and has not paid to the right people? Our members would not take any more explanations”.

Exclusion

The TEWU General Secretary said as the union continued to dialogue and have the allowance for 2020 paid, teachers were again paid in November 2021, excluding non-teaching staff.

He reminded education authorities that both the non-teaching and teaching staff played complementary roles in creating the environment that would promote quality teaching and learning.

A formal complaint, he said, had been lodged with the National Labour Commission (NLC) with the hope that the management of GES and other stakeholders would play their roles to resolve the problem with the payment of the CPD allowance for the non-teaching staff, to avoid any action that would disturb the industrial harmony in educational institutions, especially, second cycle institutions.