The Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has given the Ghana Education Service (GES) up to the end of the year to work with its stakeholders to develop a new collective agreement for its workers.
According to the association, the last agreement that was entered into between the Service and its workers expired in 2011, and that a new one was long overdue.
Within the one month period, the association is expecting that provisions of the agreement, that would govern the employment of workers subsequently, “is negotiated, agreed upon by all parties and signed, to legitimise it.”
This was contained in a communiqué signed and issued by Ms Philippa Larsen, GNAT National President last Thursday after the association’s annual national council meeting held in Abankro in the Ashanti Region.
At the three-day meeting held from November 19, to 21, 2019, the council deliberated on critical issues affecting the association and the education sector as a whole.
The communiqué called for the immediate seizure of the GES/SIC deductions and forms made available for interested teachers to fill to join the policy to maintain industrial harmony and workplace peace.
It asked the GES to engage stakeholders to discuss a common modality towards the implementation of the proposed aptitude test for promotion of staff of the service.
Additionally, the association called for expedited action on the 2019 promotion interviews to forestall the creation of a backlog of teachers waiting to be interviewed.
“The GES should scrap the 50 or more kilometre radius as a condition for the payment of transfer grants, since every transfer goes with a cost. The Government, through the Ghana Education Service (GES), should pay living wages and salaries to teachers and other workers in Ghana,” it said.
On the teacher licence, it urged the National Teaching Council (NTC) to conduct a wider stakeholder engagement on the issue of the fee to be paid by practising teachers for their licences.
According to the communiqué, the GES should organise more training sessions for teachers on the new standard-based curriculum to ensure its successful implementation.
BY TIMES REPORTER
