A group calling itself Concerned Teacher Trainees has asked President John Dramani Mahama to immediately restore their allowances or incur its wrath.
The group is leading the crusade to mount pressure on the President to restore their allowances.
Their call comes on the heels of the recent announcement by the Minister of Health, Alex Segbefia that government would pay an abated allowance of GH¢150 monthly to the nurse trainees, which appears to be a bait for the election year.
The aggrieved teacher trainees, in a statement signed by Abdul Karim, Kojo Frimpong, Ratina Kissi-Appiah, Michael Kwadwo Mireku respectively, said failure by government to restore their allowances would spell doom for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the December 7 polls.
They stated that “the Mahama-led NDC government has shown gross disrespect to teacher trainees and teaching as a profession.
“It is not surprising that some teachers always have their salaries delayed or not paid for several months which lead to the poor performance of public sector education,” they said in the press statement.
They were particularly upset about the sector minister, Prof Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, an educationist and a former University Vice Chancellor, who ideally should have proactively addressed challenges in the educational sector.
It would be recalled that the Mahama-led NDC government, which has become very unpopular in the country due to its mismanagement of the economy, cancelled the teacher trainees’ allowances on the basis of increase in admissions.
“Although the reason given by the government was not tangible, we consoled ourselves with the cancellation of the nurse trainees’ allowance because no profession is better than the other.
“On 21st July, we came across a statement from the government that nurse trainees’ allowances had been restored although the amount had been reduced to GH¢150 per month.
“When will teacher trainees’ allowances also be restored?” they quizzed.
“Even if the restoration of the nurse trainees’ allowances is for political expediency, we equally have votes.
“It is worthy to note that the cancellation of teacher trainees’ allowances has brought untold hardship on most of us, especially those coming from less privileged homes,” they said.
“Also, the cancellation of the allowance has forced some brilliant students who were interested to attend the training college to divert their attention to the polytechnics and universities.”
“The government must restore our allowances. Nursing training is not relevant than teacher training. Every profession is relevant to the state.
“Now that the government has promised to restore nurse trainees’ allowance, it means the state has money so we expect the government to restore teacher trainees’ allowances too and also pay the unpaid teachers.”
By Melvin Tarlue
Tarluemelvin12@gmail.com