The Coalition of Concerned Teacher (CCT), has warned of labour unrest if the Controller and Accountant General’s Department goes ahead to approve the use of the E-zwich platform to pay teachers.
According to CCT, the E-zwich payment system is fraught with technical challenges which make it difficult for teachers already on it to access their salaries.
Early this year, government urged teachers to subscribe to the system or forfeit their salaries.
The Acting President of CCT, King Ali Awudu, wants government to immediately suspend the process else they will protest.
According to him, government had assured that it would educate teachers on the use of the cards after which “a piloting for one of the regions was done.”
“Unfortunately, that education was not done, the team went into hibernation. We woke up one day and saw a press release from the Controller that by 31st of May, anybody within Greater Accra Region for example who has not hocked on to the E-zwich will not be paid.”
He insisted that “we cannot accept this. We dare them to implement this.”
King Ali Awudu said “organized labour has already written a letter to the Controller telling her that if they dare implement this thing, the dire consequences at the labour front will become unbearable.”
“It is better they sit back, coil into their shells and rethink of this particular idea. For example, there are so many teachers in the rural communities who have voluntarily gone to register for the E-zwich themselves and they are not even able to use it. Some of them have linked it to their accounts but when they go somewhere to withdraw money it is not usable.”
Teachers on E-zwich frustrated
Meanwhile some teachers who have registered to be paid on the E-zwich payment system have lamented to Citi News that the system is frustrating them.
“Right from the beginning when I went for the card, I was not really educated on how to get my pin. I understood later that one of the finger prints was taken as the key finger print out of the five during the registration. The first time I used it at the commercial bank, they didn’t even accept it to even give me excuses, they only told me that they were not ready to use the card,” one of the teachers lamented.
E-zwich facility not accessible
Another teacher said, “if you want to withdraw money, you have to travel a very far distance before you can access a facility where you can get the money. From the onset it failed me. I will go to the bank and they will tell me that is the finger I used to register and I will also insist that this is the finger yet it will not go through. I reported it to my bankers and they said it was also beyond their control.”
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