New KNUST Council: TEWU accuses Yankah of interference

Members of the Teachers and Education Workers Union (TEWU) at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) have accused the government of interfering in the reconstitution of the university's new Governing Council.

TEWU said the government is asking the various labour unions to change their representatives that they submitted to be part of the new Council.

KNUST-TEWU Chairman, Mr Charles Arthur told Adehye FM's Elisha Adarkwah on Friday, 2 November 2018 that the Minister of State in charge of Tertiary Education, Professor Kwesi Yankah, had requested the change.

"And we asked Mr Yankah: Can he give one reason why we should do that? He was not able to give a reason, and we told him that we cannot convince our members to accept that the current members should be changed…," Mr Arthur noted.

According to him, any such action by the government will amount to interfering in the process and TEWU will not succumb to that.

“If by the close of the day [Friday, 2 November 2018] we have not seen anything with the council coming into existence, then, Monday there's going to be a general meeting and we pick it from there", Mr Arthur threatened.

He indicated that: "As of now, the government has not submitted its members to the council and has halted the process", even though the Council was supposed to have been inaugurated on Friday.

The Chancellor of the university, Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, is currently in a meeting with the management of the university, representatives from TEWU, University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) and the Students Representative Council (SRC) at the Manhyia Palace.