The Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) has defended its decision to instruct the Controller and Accountant General to withhold the July salaries of the College of Education Teachers Association of Ghana (CETAG) members.
CETAG at a news conference in Kumasi on Monday, July 22, vowed to resist any attempts to freeze their salaries and will continue their indefinite strike until their arbitral award and negotiated service conditions are implemented.
Since June 14, CETAG members across all 46 Colleges of Education in the country have been on strike due to the government’s failure to implement their arbitral award and service conditions, which has led to students leaving the campuses.
In response, GTEC issued a statement directing the Controller and Accountant General’s Department to withhold the July 2024 salaries of all CETAG teaching staff, excluding College Principals, as a result of the ongoing strike.
Director General of GTEC, Prof. Ahmed Jinapor Abdulai, explained that the salary freeze is a logical outcome of CETAG’s failure to validate their presence at work.
Prof. Abdulai stressed that salary payments require validation, which depends on being present at the workplace.
Addressing concerns about migration discrimination, he clarified that all staff and faculty will be migrated to the service scheme of their affiliated universities.
He urged the striking teachers to return to the classrooms, assuring them that the government is working to meet CETAG’s demands.
“Well, I think it’s based on logic, as you’re aware, CETAG has not been in the classroom since June 14. Today is July 23, that is more than a month and in this country, we use what we call a salary. You need to be validated before you are paid, and that validation is informed by your presence at your workplace.
“So by logic, it means that they cannot be validated. So the reason why they are not being paid their July salary is because they are not at post and it’s a very simple, straightforward answer. So I want to use this podium or this medium to retreat the call on CETAG for them to call off their strike.
“The tiniest issue had to be, for them, the discrimination in terms of migration, where some will be migrated onto their university scheme of service whilst others will stay on the harmonised scheme of service of the colleges of education.
“This is not going to happen, all staff and faculty are going to be migrated onto the scheme of service of their affiliate universities,” Prof. Abdulai told Citi News.
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