The National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) Coalition of Concern Teachers have re-emphasized that until government pays all their arrears, their position remains unchanged on the strike issue.
Mr Christian Addai-Poku, the President of NAGRAT speaking during a press conference in Accra said “we are resolute in our demand which must be met by February 29.”
The press conference was held by the teacher unions in response to issues raised by the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service at a press conference held in Accra.
He said the claim by the Director-General of GES that government does not owe teachers any arrears and that all outstanding arrears for teachers, who qualifies have been paid as at January 1, was untrue.
He said another claim that government released one million Ghana Cedis for payment of all outstanding allowances including car maintenance allowance and transfer grants for teachers were untrue.
On the issues of fake documentation including fake certificates, the President said the unions find the assertion a baseless criminalising and defamatory of the hard won reputation of the affected teachers.
“If these teachers are fraud as the Director-General seeks to imply, then why are they still at post,” he added.
Mr Addai-Poku said it was on record that the majority of the teachers affected by this “unpopular” policy of nonpayment of arrears beyond three months have been placed on the payroll and were receiving their pay and performing their duties as teachers.
He said if these teachers were fake, as the Director-General claimed, why should the GES continue to entrust the future Ghanaian children in their hands and not arrest them.
He said their investigations have pointed to the fact that a lot of the supporting documents to the teachers applications got detached due to the poor handling by either officials at GES headquarters or audit service.
“It is, therefore, shame that the suffering teachers are being blamed for allegedly presenting incomplete documents for payment,” he said.
He said on the issue of payment of outstanding car maintenance allowance and transfer grants, government has failed to pay teachers their allowance since 2012 and it owns an estimated amount of sixteen million Ghana cedis over a four year period.
He said out of the sixteen million Ghana cedis, government only released one million Ghana cedis for the payment of the first quarter of 2015.
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