Gov’t, teacher unions meet as strike deadline nears

The Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations is expected to engage leadership of the various teacher unions on Monday, February 22 in a crunch meeting over unpaid allowances.

Leadership of the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) and the Coalition of Concerned Teachers, Ghana (CCT) had threatened to lay down their tools by the end of this month if government failed to honour an agreement of settling their arrears.

However, the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Haruna Iddrisu, last week told TV3’s Daniel Opoku that government is committed to the roadmap and has already honoured its obligations with regard to transfer grants, cars and motor bikes.

“The difficulty has to do with validation and a policy decision of government to tighten payroll control and fight payroll fraud,” he added.

He explained that those who have not received their allowances do not have complete data.

Out of 14,000 teachers, Mr Iddrisu mentioned, 6,000 have been paid with about 4,000 detected to have problems.

Monday’s crunch meeting – which will have the Auditor General and the Minister of Finance in attendance – is expected to thrash the issues out and persuade the teachers from prosecuting their threat.