Some teachers under the Ghana Education Service (GES) who are directly linked to the supposed prescribed uniform being circulated on social media have broken their silence.
According to the teachers, the uniform they are wearing was not prescribed by the Ghana Education Service but rather a self initiative without the knowledge of the Service.
The teachers are believed to be in Tepa in the Ahafo Ano North District of the Ashanti region.
There were reports that the Government of Ghana through the GES has introduced uniform for public school teachers.
The uniform, dull peach colored shirt and deep brown skirts and trousers has Ghana Education Service tag on the left pocket.
For easy identification, names of the Teacher is boldly written on the right pocket of the shirt.
According to social media gossips, the GES has contracted some Teachers to model the uniform ahead of it introduction.
However, the Service has come out to denied the reports that its intended to introduce any prescribed uniform for teachers.
The Director General of GES, Prof Akwasi Opoku Amankwa denied such introduction of prescribed uniforms on social media calling it fake news.
According to him, “GES is not a mushroom agency. It’s the largest Gov’t agency in Ghana. We employ more than half of all Gov’t employees. If we want to introduce uniforms for teachers we won’t do that through social media and over the weekend.”
He said the Service is considering investigating as to whether those individuals in the purported uniforms are teachers or non teaching staff of GES who decided to have photoshop.
“I guess it’s some group of teachers who’ve decided to have a uniform. Or it could even be photoshop. We may have to look for those in the pictures to first find out if indeed they’re teachers and if they’re what’s their motivation for the uniform.
“In this era of unionized labour, GES cannot introduce a uniform for teachers without engaging the teacher unions.
Issues relating to who pays, govt or individuals for the fabric, etc. would all have to be discussed.”
The Director General noted that in case the Service intended to introduce a prescribed uniform it would be officially announced.
Furtherance to that, one of the said teachers, Sylvia Yeboah mentioned that they sew the uniform themselves and not a GES sanctioned attire for all teachers thereby it is fake news.
The teacher who works within the Tepa District posted on her Facebook timeline that “Stop the fake news. We sew it by ourselves not GES.”
In a other post, Sylvia stated that “#attention #attention. Please the news about the uniform is a fake news and anyone who comes across it should disregard it the uniform was a self initiative by us and not by GES
Thank you”
A voice note in circulation from another teachers chanced on by DGN Online said that “the pictures in circulation are old pictures. The pictures were taken last year.
“It is not Akufo-Addo who sew the uniform for us. Even in our district, it is not everyone who have the uniform in the Tepa Distrcit here. It is only in our school here that we’ve the uniform. We’re only three teachers who have the uniform but another lady has also bought the material to sew but she is yet to do so.
“So it is not Akufo-Addo, it is not Tepa District, it is not GES but we sew the uniforms ourselves. We’ve about 8 staff here but only three of us have sew the uniform. How can last year incident be going viral now on social where some are castigating and others praising us. It is very ridiculous.”
By Vincent Kubi