The government says the allowances for teachers from the various Colleges of Education, who went on strike, will be paid within two weeks.
This follows the refusal of members of the Colleges of Education Teachers Association of Ghana (CETAG) to call off their prolonged industrial action.
Despite a court ruling declaring the strike illegal, the teachers have not returned to work. Consequently, salaries for those who did not work in July have been frozen.
Speaking to JoyNews, the Director for Tertiary Education at the Ministry of Education, Professor Francis Nunoo stated that, teachers have eight days to resume their duties or risk forfeiting their July salaries.
He insists that, efforts are being made to settle the outstanding allowances.
“We are fact-checking them and based on the availability of national funds, it will hit their account. All the necessary paperwork, everything is being worked on. The payment system has been done. All that is left is for the money to hit people’s accounts and we are looking at the situation of maximum of two weeks for it to hit their accounts”.
Meanwhile, the teachers are expected to meet with the government and Parliament in separate meetings to end the impasse.
Professor Francis Nunoo told JoyNews’ Evans Mensah that he is hopeful the meetings will be fruitful.
“We have an attendance list of those who are working. Those people will be exempted but those who have not worked all through the period may be affected. But we hope it won’t get to that far. On Wednesday, we are engaging with them. The Minister for Education, Dr Osei Yaw Adutwum has called the various government stakeholders to sit at a table and we hope this will be the last time for us to solve the problem so that we don’t have to freeze their salaries.”
However, the National Labour Commission (NLC) says GTEC did no wrong in freezing the salaries of the teachers.
Speaking on JoyNews, Executive Secretary of the Commission, Ofosu Asamoah insisted that the ongoing strike is illegal.
“This is like two elephants fighting and I feel so sad about it. The court has injuncted the strike, yet they are continuing with the strike. With that, it makes the strike illegal because the court says ‘This strike is not right, so stop’.
“When it becomes an illegal strike, the law provides that they should not be paid for the period they engaged in the illegal strike,” he explained.