GNAT General Secretary cautions teachers on forged documents

Mr. David Ofori Acheampong, the General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), has cautioned teachers to avoid forging documents for promotions and salary increases.

He said issues relating to salaries were national security matters and, therefore, warned that those teachers involved in the use of forged documents would be caught by the law and made to pay back the monies fraudulently paid to them.

Mr Acheampong gave the caution when he addressed the fifth Quadrennial Regional Delegates’ Conference of the Brong Ahafo branch of GNAT on Thursday in Sunyani.

The two-day conference, attended by about 450 delegates from the 14 districts of the association in the region, was on the theme ‘Transforming Societies through Education, the 2030 Agenda: The Role of the Teacher’.

It aimed, among others, to evaluate their activities since the 2013 conference, fulfill a constitutional requirement as a prelude to the association’s national delegates’ conference, elect regional executives for 2017 to 2021, and to map out strategies to ensure that the association would continuously be vibrant in the region.

He observed that some teachers condoned and connived with some unscrupulous staff of the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department to execute such fraudulent schemes.

Mr Acheampong emphasized that the GNAT existed to speak for its members and promote their interest for the general progress and development of the nation, but not to defend dishonest teachers in matters of criminality.

He, therefore, advised that those teachers must stop such dishonest acts of national economic sabotage because they would be found for the law to deal drastically with them.

On the licensing of teachers as proposed by the National Teaching Council (NTC), Mr Acheampong said teachers were not scared of the examination aspect of it.

He said they believed rather that it would inure to their advantage, saying: “What is important is, the right thing must be done and the appropriate bodies must come with the modalities about how it is going to be done”.

Mr Michael Nsiah-Agyapong, the Regional Chair of the association, in a welcome address, said the region had a membership of 27,000 teachers and its 14 districts were being manned effectively by District Secretaries, comprising 12 males and two females.

He said since his tenure as Regional Chair, there had been significant improvement and sanity at the regional secretariat, citing that, security-wise, his administration had ensured the provision of street lights to brighten the link road to the secretariat, “which was no-go area after 1800 hours”.

Mr Nsiah-Agyapong added that within the secretariat itself, theft cases were reported quite often, but upon the advice of the Municipal Police Command, razor wires were used, and since then no theft case had been reported.