Despite a series of meetings with different players in the education sector to discuss its members’ concerns, the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) claims it is still on strike.
The group said it would continue to boycott lecture halls until the government meets its requests for improved working conditions.
Dr. Samuel Nkumbaan, president of the University of Ghana branch of UTAG, said that the authorities in charge of ensuring that the desired conditions of service are satisfied to have yet to make any clear decision that would motivate them to call off the strike.
“We’ve had a couple of meetings; one with Ministry of Education and also with Vice Chancellor’s Ghana and in all of these, the understanding was to seek clarity on what the demands of UTAG are and also to see how they can be able to mediate between the government stakeholders that are able to make a determination on our conditions of service and UTAG. This is in the hope to secure a deal that will get us back to the classroom. Beyond that, there hasn’t been any call up for UTAG to engage government,” he said.
He said that UTAG is prepared to return to the classroom provided the government considers a 114 percent base pay and interim market premium for them until the labor market survey is conducted to regularize the amount.
“[What we want is] For the government in the interim to consider the 114% of base pay currently and interim market premium, for us to be able to accept that. That is a reasonable concession that we can work with pending the completion of a labor market survey and its implementation, which is currently in the pipeline… Our decision is premised on the fact that something positive comes on the side of government which improves our condition and if that is not happening, we do not see ourselves coming any time soon,” he added.
UTAG members on all campuses are on strike in order to push the government to restore the service conditions agreed upon in 2012.
A lecturer’s Basic plus Market Premium was set at $2,084.42 in 2012 under the terms of service.
UTAG has claimed that the existing arrangement has decreased the basic rates for its members to $997.84.
For the past three weeks, the association has been on strike.
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SOURCE: CITINEWS
