A teacher union, All Teachers Alliance Ghana (ATAG), says the government is not being fair to newly trained teachers posted to various service stations since February 2022.
According to ATAG, the teachers are yet to receive their identification numbers and let alone go to the Ministry of Finance to take their biometrics for onward payment of salary.
In a statement signed by General Secretary, Albert Dadson Amoah, the group bemoaned that all attempts to get the attention of government have proven futile.
“Sadly, we have left these young professionals to struggle in the face of general hardships prevailing in the country.
“Some of them can hardly meet their daily upkeep whilst others are resorting to excessive borrowing to survive,” the statement read.
The situation, they lamented, is affecting them both psychologically, and economically and affecting their quality of state of mind.
“Many of these young professionals are starving at their various stations and the level of economic and psychological torture is unbearable for them. It is sad teacher unions had remained silent knowing very well that it is not easy for these young ones.
“Since 2017, newly trained teachers had been paid three months after postings, so what is going on this time around?” the statement quizzed.
To them, the government’s call for quality education will virtually become a mirage if it lacks the necessary urgency toward pressing issues that confront the sector.
“Educational policies and infrastructure development cannot alone give us the necessary positive impact if we treat teachers with this level of contempt.
“All the good efforts of the government towards achieving world-class educational quality and meeting the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 will crumble when teachers are treated as an afterthought in policy making and implementation,” the group cautioned.
They have, therefore, appealed to the Ghana Education Service and the Ministry of Education, with all due respect, to as a matter of urgency, attend to the predicaments of these newly trained teachers who had been left hopeless and suffering in their various stations.