Earlier this month, Pupil Teachers across the country woke up to the unpleasant news that the Ghana Education Service and the government by extension no longer needed their services. Up till now, that information is still murky as there were refutation of it by a deputy minister of education Mr. Samuel Okudjeto Ablakwa. Contrary to the deputy minister’s stance that Pupil Teachers have not been sacked, the Director General of the Ghana Education Service (GES) has in various media platforms reiterated the point that Pupil Teachers are no longer desired and that a circular has been given to all District Directors of Education to inform Pupil Teachers under their domains that their services were no longer needed.
Some affected Pupil Teachers have no problem if their employers were to lay them off. They however have a big problem if after working for two years and haven’t received a penny, they are asked to go home without the necessary steps put in place to pay them all their arrears. I found it rather unfortunate that when the Director General of GES was questioned about some affected Pupil Teachers not being paid for two years by TV3, he vehemently denied it, claiming that nothing of that sort could happen or is happening.
I want to use this platform to draw the attention of the Director General of GES and the government to the fact that in some districts in Ghana, teachers are employed and not paid for even three years. Evidence of this abounds in the East Mamprusi district of the northern region where teachers there have worked for close to two years and their documents are yet to go to the Controller and Accountant General’s Office to effect the necessary payments. These Pupil Teachers for two years haven’t even been given GES Staff ID numbers. This notwithstanding, they have been the most committed of teachers believing that no matter how long it took them, one day they will be paid. This latest directive by the government and GES and the latter’s denial of the existence of teachers with these peculiar problems only shows how ineffective our institutions are and probably how inefficient and insouciant their occupants are also.
If the GES knows that appointment of Pupil Teachers is a one year contract why then don’t they put in place measures to ensure that all Pupil Teachers don’t have to wait for more than a year before they begin receiving their monthly salaries? It is never the fault of Pupil Teachers that they are not paid in excess of two years and they should never suffer for the omissions or commissions of other officers like the District Directors and IPPD officers who are supposed to fast-track the processing of their appointment particulars to ensure that they are paid.
The last time I wrote about the fate of these teachers was two months ago and I never for once imagined that any time soon they will be sacked without being paid by the government. The District Director in Gambaga I’m told was angered that someone had the nerves to write about the rot in her office. I guess by now she is beginning to feel pity for these Pupil Teachers if only she has a son or daughter who could have been in the shoes that these unfortunate heroes have found themselves.
Quite confusing too is the definition of a Pupil Teacher. Some graduates from the universities and Polytechnics who have not been to any teacher training institution are also called Pupil Teachers. While the Director General of GES has not come clearly as to whether the SSCE certificate holders or the graduate non-professional teachers or both are affected by the directive, some GES officials claim whoever has not been to training college and employed by the GES as a teacher is affected. Others claim only the SSCE holders are. So whose claim is right? The GES and the Ministry of Education will have to come out clearly on that too.
In conclusion, while desperate times call for desperate measures, the unfortunate Pupil Teachers cannot be asked to go home empty-handed haven worked for the GES with validly signed appointment letters and proofs that they have been at post for two years. It is very unfair to them and whoever has the power to ensure that they are paid and is not doing it is to put it mildly, ‘wicked to the core’. The coming days promise to be tense as these affected teachers in the East Mamprusi district especially are not going to accept the turn of events as we now have it. If it demands marching to the Flagstaff House, they are willing to go and even beyond to the White House to claim what is duly theirs.
For the benefit of readers, I’ve attached the earlier article I wrote drawing the attention of Ghanaians to the plight of these teachers below.
ALUTA CONTINUA, VICTORIA ASCERTA
AUTHOR: MILICENT DAHAMANI, GAMBAGA.
TEACHER RECRUITS DYING OF HUNGER AND ANGER IN EAST MAMPRUSI
It is amazing how we blame politicians for every misfortune we encounter in our lives. Most often, these blames we place on politicians can best be blamed on negligent and incompetent civil servants than politicians. I don’t see why you should blame a politician if as a teacher your district Director of Education who has oversight responsibility of everything education in the district fails to do his/her work, including making sure that inputs of newly recruited teachers are processed early enough for them to begin receiving their salaries. This is unfortunately the case in my district, the East Mamprusi district of the northern region of Ghana.
For almost two years that the district directorate appointed pupil teachers, they have not done anything about processing their salaries. Sadly enough, they have not even communicated a word to these teachers to explain the delays if there are any such reasons. Whenever these teachers even make an attempt to enquire from the IPPD officer the status of their appointment and document processing, he becomes his snobbish best and either avoid them without a word or harshly and impolitely give them a cheeky and annoying response.
Things have now gotten out of hand since the IPPD officer no longer stays in the district. The IPPD officer has vacated post for further studies even though he has not resigned and still acts as such. One may wonder what then the government is paying the IPPD man for since his role is to facilitate the processing of workers’ salaries which he wantonly ignores with snobbish impunity. For the district Director of Education, we only blame her for not supervising her subordinates to do the right thing. She began quite well and has been performing well with regards to visiting schools and making sure that teachers are in their classrooms. We only wonder why she cannot transfer that zeal to also make sure that people employed and indeed seated right in her noses everyday perform their duties to get what is due to the teachers to them.
We have kept quiet for a long time and will not tolerate any further delays in our salaries. We cannot blame the minister of education or that of finance for not paying us. Our enemies are just next door. However, we are appealing to the powers that be to come to our aid. This is an SOS message we are sending out to the powers above our district officers to call them to do the right thing. All pupil teachers in neighboring districts who were employed at about the same time as ours or even later have had their names mechanized and they are now enjoying their salaries. We are still to have staff identification numbers and indeed our Director confessed to us last Friday that she does not even know where our documents have gotten to, and like I stated earlier the IPPD man was not in his office to tell us.
This is the seventeenth month of our employment and we have since been at post but the Director and his IPPD man have denied us our salaries. It is even too painful to think that the government will only pay three months arrears of all the months we have worked and continue to work for the GES and of course the state. We are once again appealing to the powers that be to come to our aid on humanitarian grounds. We are starving and our parents are becoming desolate and angrier with us every passing day for no fault of ours.
Workers on payroll keep complaining of the hardships they go through. One can imagine someone who is also giving the same service or even better and is not enjoying the fruits of his or her labor for almost two years. Most of us do not stay in the villages we were posted to teach in. We board buses to these villages every day for the last seventeen months. Some who are fortunate to have motorbikes in their families will also have to fuel these bikes to and from work. Those that stay at their places of work have to rent accommodation, feed themselves and incur other expenses such as buying mattresses, lamps, batteries etc to fulfill their part of the contract with the state. However, employees of the state are doing nothing about their welfare.
It has never been our intention to let the world know of the rot in GES-Gambaga but if doing so will be the panacea to our problems we welcome it whole-heartedly. A hungry man is, and has always been an angry man. We are now willing to invite even the devil to dinner if he has the solution to our problems. Mr. Rashid the IPPD officer has made us useless, despondent, angry and vengeful. He has treated us with disdain for far too long without caution from his superiors which is why we are not absolving them of the blame.
PAY US NOW OR WE ALL LIVE TO REGRET OUR ACTIONS.
Writer: Milicent Dahamani, for Hungrily-Angry Teachers in East Mamprusi.
