The Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has reiterated its commitment to cooperate fully with the Department of Gender and Social Protection to drastically reduce the prevalence of Sexual and Gender based Violence (SGBV) in schools.
GNAT has also called for a broader stakeholder engagement on curbing the menace in the country saying, that the fight to curb the phenomenon required collective efforts of all stakeholders to bring it to the barest minimum.
Consequently, the Association has challenged the Department of Gender to constantly engage them on issues of teen pregnancies and SGBV involving teachers as they had the needed logistics to help address the issue.
Mr William Abedi Boadu, the Central Regional Secretary of GNAT, gave the assurance at a press conference to set the record straight about recent media reports that teachers in the Region were noted for impregnating teenage students.
Ghana Health Service (GHS) in collaboration with the Central Regional Department of Gender last year conducted a survey to find out which group of persons were impregnating the girls of which 301 teachers were found to be responsible.
The teaching profession had since received a lot of bastardisation though GNAT had challenged the authenticity of the data.
Mr Boadu explained at the press briefing that though GNAT would not assume that teachers were angels, it would be unfair to the teaching profession if isolated cases which were not proven and the allegation were thrown to the public that teachers were impregnating teenage students.
He therefore called on the GHS and the Department of Gender to furnish the secretariat with details of the teachers involved for the necessary disciplinary actions to be taken.
He added that “in as much as we are partners, we would not want a situation where the image of the teacher will be dragged in the mud. We have code of conduct”.
Mr Boadu further appealed to Headteachers, P.T.A executives and School Management Committees to desist from serving as arbitrators in issues relating to teenage pregnancies involving teachers as they did not have the capacity to do so.
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