Tension is building up at the Ghana Education Service (GES) over persistent refusal of retiring personnel to go on compulsory retirement as required by the national constitution.
The development, Today understands, has brought about agitations within the GES, compelling management to send a strong worded-letter to all heads of basic and senior high schools (SHS) under GES to impress upon their staff members to comply with the regulation.
The letter chanced upon by Today, was dated Monday, June 5, 2017 and signed by the Acting Director-General of GES, Prof. Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, was also copied to all regional/district directors and general managers of government educational units across the country.
The letter was headlined: “Compulsory Retirement of Ghana Education Service Staff.”
It reads in part, “the management of GES has learnt with much concern the rate at which officers who are supposed to go on compulsory retirement are still at post.”
According to the said letter, Article 199(1) of the 1992 Constitution states among others that “a person shall, except as otherwise provided in this constitution, retire from the public service on attaining the age of sixty years.”
The letter further quoted section six of the code of conduct of teachers which states that “an employee shall retire compulsorily from Ghana Education Service on reaching the prescribed age of 60 years.”
It further directed all regional/metropolitan and district directors to ensure that every staff proceeds on retirement after attaining 60 years.
“Ghana Education Service shall not entertain any application for extension of service in the GES after the compulsory retirement age of sixty. Officers who have submitted their applications on the correction of date of birth but are due for retirement should leave their positions while waiting for the outcome of the committee working on it,” it added.
The letter warned that officers who have retired and were still at post should, in their own interest, handover and leave immediately.
Source: Today
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So the question is, are they still receiving salary when they are supposed to be on retirement. What I know is that in the public sector, employees are given notice on their payslips six clear months to their day/month/year of retirement, somebody who is to retire in June,2017 will not see his or her name on the payroll in July,2017,so how can such people continue to go to offices as active staff, the G E S should come again. There is more to the issue at stake than we are been told
I do not know how things are done in the Government sector but in a serious organisation, it is not the discretion of staff to decide whether to go on compulsory retirement. You are notified for the first time five years to retirement and given the option of a voluntary retirement and counselling. However, on the anniversary of your compulsory retirement age of sixty, your name is expunged from the payroll/records. Sometimes, I read some of these things and I ask whether we are serious as a country. Why should we be wasting time and money over something a simple computer command can do?