University Teachers To Continue Strike

The Universities Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) said on Tuesday, this week, that no decision had been taken to call off its strike action and therefore members should continue to stay out of the classrooms until further notice.

The call by the UTAG executive followed the resumption of lectures by some lecturers at the University of Ghana, Legon, following a number preliminary agreements reached in negotiations with the Standing Joint Negotiations Committee (SJNC) of public universities and government representatives.

Among the issues agreed upon at the meeting of the various parties on August 20 were that the negotiated salaries would be factored into the 2004 budget, that the SJNC be mandated to negotiate UTAG’s salary proposals and that UTAG should hold further consultations with its national executive committee and general membership ahead of the next meeting tomorrow.

These developments might have motivated some of the lecturers to resume duty on Monday, this week, but UTAG executive think the negotiations are not yet over and the strike should go on.

The Chronicle on Monday phoned UTAG president, Legon, Dr. Dominic Edoh, and asked him how long the strike would continue.

He said he did not know but various meetings were going on among the parties ahead of the resumption of negotiations (on Friday). He said UTAG could have recommenced that students should be sent home until the impasse was resolved but given the goodwill shown by government it was deemed necessary to allow them to be on campus while the negotiations went on.

Asked what was their major demand, Dr. Edoh said the action by UTAG was not necessarily for the increment of lecturers’ salaries but to correct the disparities in the salary structure of lecturers.

He said that the present salary structure of the public universities is nothing compared to that of officers in analogous positions in the civil service and other public sector establishments.

For instance, a senior lecturer’s salary is equated to that of a security guard in some other public establishments.

“What we want is a kind of structure upon which lecturers salary can be based,” Dr. Edoh said, adding that in the past there was a system in place, which had lecturers’ salaries structured like that of the civil servants, and this avoided the current disparities in their salaries.

He warned that if nothing is done to correct the present situation Ghana may witness further exodus of its university teachers.

However, Minister of State for Tertiary Education, Ms. Elizabeth Ohene, said on Monday that she was hopeful that the impasse would be resolved amicably.

“Lecturers, do not like to stay out of the classroom,” she said, “they love to do what they were trained to do