Mark Dankyira Korankye
THE TEACHERS and Educational Workers Union (TEWU) has warned Government again to stop discriminating against non-teaching staff within Ghana’s education sector.
According to TEWU, Government risk “prolong industrial unrest in the education sector, unless the discriminatory tendencies against the Non- teaching staff in the Ghana Education Service (GES) and Colleges of Education are stopped with immediate effect.”
The Union made the call in its latest press release, urging that “the critical role the non-teaching staff play in ensuring conducive atmosphere for teaching and learning in schools, as well as quality service delivery in the broader education sector, should not be lost on government and its relevant agencies.”
The release issued by the Acting General Secretary of TEWU, Mark Dankyira Korankye, says “the worry here is that, policies for improving the welfare of players in the education sector tend to favour only the teaching staff, with the non-teaching staff sometimes seen as an after-thought.”
It lamented that “it is unacceptable that the Presidency and other government agencies have not given the needed attention and priority to the issues of discrimination against the non-teaching staff as contained in a number of petitions by TEWU to the relevant authorities alerting them on how our members are always sidelined in policies aimed at enhancing teaching and learning outcomes as well as improving the welfare packages of workers in the education sector.”
“In spite of the naked discriminatory behaviours by government,” the statement noted, “the entire membership of TEWU have exercised patience especially, for the past eight months, with the expectations and understanding that pertinent issues raised in a number of petitions and media statements should have prompted urgent attention from government and other stakeholders including the GES.”
TEWU, it added, “is compelled to once again raise the issues and demand immediate action from government and other stakeholders to have them addressed by the end of May 2019 in order to avert any nation-wide strike by members.”
According to the statement, since, August 2018, an advisory group within TEWU called “GES Think Tank”, after extensive deliberations with the Union’s leadership and members made a number of recommendations to the government through the Ghana Education Service and the National Council for Tertiary Education.
The recommendations, it said, included: “the need to recruit more non-teaching Staff to supplement the few staff who are enduring health challenges every day because of too much workloads following the introduction of the Double Track System to deal with the increases in Students Population.”
For instance, it explained, “the number of Kitchen Staff who used to prepare meals for about one thousand students are the same personnel preparing meals for over two thousand students now.”
It bemoaned that “our mothers and sisters feeding our children in the Senior High Schools are getting sick because of heavy workloads.”
The same goes for the pantry hands, security, administrative and Library Staff as well as Laboratory Technicians, house mothers (in the special schools), drivers and tradesmen/artisans, who are confronted with increased student population and increasing workloads without any additional remuneration or incentive, it noted.
Another issue of serious concern to TEWU, it disclosed, “is the undue delay in releasing the Tier Two Pension Fund to the GES Occupational Pension Scheme so that the Board of trustees can invest prudently as our first batch of beneficiaries of the lump sum pension are due for retirement in January 2020.”