University Administrators Call NLC�s Bluff

The leadership of the Ghana Association of University Administrators (GAUA) has called the bluff of the National Labour Commission (NLC) on the court suit it wants to file against it. The NLC is expected to file a writ at the Accra High Court against the GAUA to compel the administrators to call off its strike. The Association embarked on the strike in protest of their current working conditions following their migration onto the Single Spine Salary Structure. Administrative work has come to a literal standstill in the public universities across the country leading to disruptions in the commencement of the school calendar. The graduation ceremony for the 2011/2012 batch of students at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has been postponed indefinitely due to this. It is also likely that the matriculation ceremony of freshmen to the universities will also be affected. In an interview with Citi News, the president of the KNUST Branch of GAUA, Solomon Panford said the Association is ready to fight its position in court. �We are there to receive any summons. We will respond. We will meet and decide and take a decision as to what to do� We cannot be perturbed by these things. The court is there for all of us. If they take us there we will go and respond,� he said. In a related development the Executive Coordinator of the Labour Rights Institute, Mohammed Affum, has advised GAUA to be cautious in its dealings with the NLC as they could be cited for contempt of court. �Under the circumstance we are talking about, the Labour Commission has given a directive to the university administrators to call off the strike and return to work. They have not complied and therefore the Commission is going to the High Court with an application for the court to compel them to call off the strike,� he pointed out. �What this means is that after hearing the case, based on its merit, the court will order the university administrators, which is a trade union, to comply with the directive of the National Labour Commission and call off the strike. If they refuse it means they will be in contempt of the High Court and contempt of the High Court is a quasi-criminal offense which has its own punishments,� he explained.