TEWU Threatens Demo Over Tech Varsities Staff Migration

Mark Dankyira Korankye, acting General Secretary of TEWU

The Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU) of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) has raised concerns about government’s ‘disregard’ for it with regard to the discussions and implementation process of migrating staff of technical universities.

In a press statement, TEWU said, “It is sad to note that TEWU, as a major stakeholder, has been completely left out in the negotiation of the migration process.” It, therefore, threatened to join staff of technical universities in their planned strike action.

“As it stands, members of TEWU do not know their placements in terms of the migration though we took part in the staff audit conducted by National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE),” TEWU noted.

It said, “Members of TEWU in the technical universities are in solidarity with the other associations in the technical universities who have embarked on strike.”

“We wish to state that we will not hesitate to join them soon in the strike because we are in the struggle together,” it added.

The union, the statement observed, was also not happy with the continuous delay on the part of government in releasing the second tier contribution of technical universities staff from January 2010 to April 2019.

“From 1st January 2020, our members who will be retiring stand the danger of going home with nothing…” it said.

It added that the Board of Trustees of the Ghana Polytechnic Workers’ Pension Scheme has made several follow-ups to get the contributions to the fund manager to invest towards members’ pension but to no avail.

It noted that the TEWU of TUC (Ghana) had, therefore, resolved that, if by Tuesday, 31st October 2019 these issues are not resolved, its members would have no option but to embark on an indefinite strike action until the above issues were resolved.

BY Melvin Tarlue