Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT)
We do not want to think that the various teachers’ groupings from the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) to the Concerned Teachers, among others, have become part of the opposition game plan. They appear to have become pawns in the rather desperate and sophisticated National Democratic Congress (NDC) 2020 project.
The leadership of the groupings — one of them notorious for mastering the art of disrupting the academic calendar of schools across the country, especially when the New Patriotic Party (NPP) is at the helm — has been infected with Ghana’s partisan political contagion. The black sheep of the teachers’ leadership has been active in such matters, his association with the opposition no longer a matter for hushed discussion.
Being teachers and therefore role models, they should have taken actions steeped in sincerity, without moral blemish and latched on open-mindedness.
Last week, with the active behind-the-scene pulling of the strings by the ace strike organizer, teachers threatened to disrupt the academic calendar if they have not done so already. The threat might not be the last before next year’s polls as contained in the game plan.
There is no dearth of reasons why the threat to put down their chalks should not be said to lack merit.
When the records present female teachers as watchmen in the fold of the Ghana Education Service (GES), of course, payment of the heritage arrears should not be obliged without interrogating the circumstances underpinning this anomaly.
Under a new dispensation hinged on good governance, due diligence is required in matters bordering on dipping hands into the state kitty.
It is about John Mahama’s tenure arrears, an element which they avoided in their ranting when they engaged the media. This smacks of mischief.
Teachers, like other categories of public servants, deserve to be heard but only when their grievances are grounded in veracity.
Teachers could not have incurred a more serious moral blow than in the aftermath of the exposure of this wobbling cluster of so-called grievances. Did they edit the script before embarrassing themselves the way they did? Unless they insist that the female teachers return to the schools to work as night watchmen when schools close or that all the names they presented are deserving of being paid arrears. If they are insisting that so is the case we would be hard pressed not to regard them as persons morally unqualified to teach tomorrow’s leaders.
While we do not think that the rewards of teachers should remain in heaven, they deserve these here on earth; the payment should be done in consonance with sincerity and best practices, not according to the dictates of a human dinosaur who thinks dining with disgruntled politicians is the way to go.
Let those who must be paid their dues receive same and the female teachers who double as night watchmen denied what they are unqualified to receive.