Technical universities’ administrators to withdraw services over salary structure

Administrators of Technical Universities across the country will from Monday begin an indefinite withdrawal of services to push government to engage them in ongoing negotiations to fully migrate them onto the salary structure of public universities.

At an emergency delegates conference in Cape Coast Friday, the administrators said they have duly notified the National Labour Commission and the relevant agencies of their decision in line with the labour laws.

The administrators who form the Technical University Senior Administrators Association of Ghana (TUSAAG) say they will not back down on their demands this time around until all issues regarding their salaries and allowances as university workers are fully addressed by the government.

According to them, the government is deliberately dragging its feet in migrating them onto the public universities salary structure, noting it is treating “Technical Universities as second fiddle within the public universities system”.

Government between August 2016 and 2018 converted eight polytechnics in the country into technical universities to further enrich training of high level technical skills in the areas of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET).

It is also to provide more progression avenues for technical and vocational students from the second cycle institutions.

As part of the conversion, staff of the technical universities, including the teachers and administrators, were among other things, supposed to be migrated onto the public universities salary structure and given the same status as those other public universities.

There have, however, been agitations from the various workers’ groups within the technical universities over government’s failure to implement fully the law establishing them, alleging the government was being discriminatory.

Currently, the Technical Universities Teachers Association (TUTAG) is on an indefinite strike due to the same issues, an action the Technical Universities Workers Association of Ghana (TUWAG) has indicated it supports.

A statement issued by TUSAAG after the conference Friday said the government has instead of resourcing the technical universities and addressing their issues, has “preoccupied” itself with “staff audit with the aim to downgrade some staff”.

“As if this was not enough, government through its agencies, employed delay tactics in migrating staff of these Technical Universities to their respective salary grades and conditions of service for Public Universities” TUSAAG.

TUSAAG expressed concern about what it termed “deliberate non-involvement” its members in meetings to discuss issues bothering on migration of staff of the Technical Universities.

“We have written several letters to the National Council for Tertiary Education seeking audience to discuss concerns of TUSAAG members on the migration of staff but have received no responses to our letters,” it noted.

“The sidelining of TUSAAG in these discussions is unhealthy since eventually the needs and concerns of these Unions are not captured and taken into account,” the administrators said.

They described their sidelining as “attempt to dump on its members what the government thinks, and not what its Members deserve”

“In fact, we are mindful of events of the past in the Polytechnic era where staff categories in the Administrative and Professional class were paid a market premium of 70% instead of 96%. This time around, TUSAAG will not sit down unconcerned for anything to be dumped on its members,” the maintained.