Demo or not, you’ll still do national service – Ministry of Education to teachers

The Ministry of Education has said all trainee teachers will still have to do their one-year mandatory national service in spite of a demonstration against the decision by some newly-trained teachers.

On Wednesday, 7 November members of the Teacher Trainees Association of Ghana (TTAG) embarked on a demonstration against the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service over their insistence that they do the national service.

TTAG’s members said they were supposed to be posted in September this year to start teaching but the government, according to their intelligence, intends posting them to do the one-year mandatory national service, which, they say was not part of the initial agreement.

TTAG said its members are not ready to do their national service but rather want to be given permanent appointments.

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”.

But speaking in an interview with Class 91.3FM’s Blessed Sogah after the demonstration, the Public Relations Officer of the Ministry of Education, Mr Ekow Vincent Assafuah, said: “It is a simple matter, it is within their right to embark on the demonstration; the most important thing is for you to go through the processes”.

“When you check the act that established the national service, it simply tells you that every Ghanaian is supposed to go through the national service so far as you are a graduate.

“In 2004, there was an upgrade of the Colleges of Education. They were awarded Certificate A, and now they are awarded a diploma. If you get a diploma it means that under the law you are supposed to have what we call the national service. This is just the implementation of the law and that is what we are doing.”