Education Minister Dr Mathew Opoku Prempeh has sent a strong message to teacher trainees that they will not be given permanent employment if they do not do their national service.
On Wednesday, 7 November 2018, members of the Teacher Trainees Association of Ghana (TTAG) embarked on a demonstration against the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service over the insistence of the two supervisory authorities that they do the national service.
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Clad in red to signify their anger, the TTAG members marched through the principal streets of Accra with placards which read: “Thanks for Allowance but post us now”, “You gave us an allowance and so what?”, “Education sector is in limbo”, “Napo must go”, “NPP, we are tired of promises; post us now”, “NPP has betrayed us, GES post us now”.
Speaking at the launch of a World Bank report in Accra on Thursday, however, the minister said: “I heard the teacher trainees say that: ‘Yes, we are going to do induction and probation, but we don’t want to do national service’. Really?
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“When we say your induction and probation period is the same as your national service period, why don’t you want to do it? Nurses do it, doctors do it, lawyers do it. Everybody who has gone through the tertiary system does national service. So, everybody is going to do it. It is a fight I’ll love because you have to tell me why you are better than somebody else. If you don’t do your national service, we don’t get to employ you. We are going to do it,” he said.