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The Minister of Education, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, has called on the Polytechnic Teachers Association of Ghana (POTAG) to call off its strike. Rather, she asked the association to go back to the negotiation table to continue the discussion of issues pertaining to the book and research allowance. The minister said the continued strike by the lecturers would further derail the academic calendar. Prof Opoku-Agyemang made the call when she held a meeting with the national executive of POTAG in her office in Accra. She said plans were afoot to implement the recommendations of the committee on the conversion of polytechnics into technical universities, noting, however, that the continued strike would jeopardise the implementation of the recommendations. She, therefore, called on the lecturers to team up with the ministry to implement the road map to the implementation of the recommendations. In response to the minister�s appeal, the national executive of POTAG said they had taken note of the appeal and promised to consult their constituents and report back to the minister on Friday, July 4, 2014. Earlier in a separate meeting with the minister, the national executive of the Ghana National Union of Polytechnic Students (GNUPS) had appealed to the minister to use her influence to call on POTAG to call off the strike, since it was affecting academic work on the various polytechnic campuses. Present at both meetings were Mr Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa and Mr Alex Kyeremeh, both deputy ministers, as well as Mr Enoch Cobbinah, the Chief Director of the ministry.