Teacher trainees unhappy with gov’t’s treatment

The leadership of the Teacher Trainee’s Association of Ghana, (TTAG) has registered their displeasure about government’s treatment of trainees in the various Colleges of Education.

Addressing a press conference on Tuesday in Accra, Mr Sampson Tagbor, the National President of TTAG, said teacher trainees were suffering because of government’s inability to address their challenges.

He said government’s decision to take care of teacher trainees' feeding grant had been a challenge with the monies unpaid.

“Even the ones we paid for the 2014/2015 academic year and the first semester of the ensuing year is yet to be refunded to us,” he added.

Mr Tagbor has therefore called on all teacher trainees not to pay for their feeding fees as a component of their bill, "since government has to pay and in its numerous submissions has indicated that they continue to feed teacher trainees thrice a day."

He also called on government to refund their feeding fees to them, especially the level 300 students since they would be out of school in a very short time.

The leadership of TTAG also appealed to government to come to the aid of teacher trainees because of the overburden financial commitment as a result of the scrapping of their allowance.

Mr Tagbor later commended government for taking the bold step since last year to exclude tertiary institutions including Colleges of Education from paying for utility.

He, however, noted that some Colleges of Education continued to bill students for utility, adding that the TTAG would take legal actions against such institutions if such practices continued.

He called on the trainees not to pay for utility bills as part of their school fees, and appealed to all College authorities to desist from forcing trainees to pay for their feeding fees, but rather go to government for their monies as it still remained their responsibility.

The TTAG threatened to demonstrate if government failed to refund trainees monies.