Let’s avoid another era of strikes
Yesterday, the Accra Polytechnic branch of the Polytechnic Teachers Association of Ghana (POTAG) announced that it had started an indefinite strike to back its demand for the government to pay polytechnic teachers their book and research allowance.
The announcement comes on the heels of the strike started last Thursday by the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) and the Coalition of Concerned Teachers (CCT).
The NAGRAT strike is in connection with what it says is the government’s refusal to remit teachers’ pension to the Ghana Education Service (GES) Trustees, fund managers for members, to manage.
NAGRAT says although its members had, in the past four years, had money deducted from their salaries, those deductions have not been paid to the GES Trustees as required by law.
The new pension law makes it mandatory for five per cent of workers’ earnings to be deducted and invested towards pension, and NAGRAT says although the deductions have been going on, the money goes to the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA), which by law is a regulator of fund managers.
In the case of the CCT, it says in addition to the concerns raised by NAGRAT, the issue of transfer grant has become a big one which has remained unresolved and led to their strike.
The country is not new to strikes. Since the beginning of the implementation of the Single Spine Pay Policy (SSPP), almost every workers’ group has at one point or another gone on strike to fight for one or another item.
To the Daily Graphic, however, what is worrying is what seems to be a resurgence in strikes by workers in the country. With the troubles with the implementation of the SSPP almost over, it was our expectation that the nation would know some industrial peace, especially at a time when a national economic forum has been held to seek consensus on solving the economic malaise facing the country.
Some employers and labour groups have given us hope that the deliberations at the forum will help achieve industrial harmony in the country.
According to discussants at the forum, consensus was reached on a number of issues relating to labour-management co-operation and it is our wish that the same spirit would guide the nation in all future labour issues for industrial harmony.
Issues of survival during retirement are very serious, since at that stage most people are unable to undertake any commercial/economic activity and rely on their pensions.
We urge the government and the NPRA to speedily resolve the issue of teachers’ pension funds by paying all the deductions to the trustee selected by the graduate teachers.
The government must also ensure that grants that need to be paid to transferred teachers are paid promptly and the book allowance issue of the POTAG resolved.
The country cannot afford to go back to the era of weekly strikes.
One of the legitimate rights of workers in their fight for their rights is to go on strike.
However, those strikes appear to have become the only means to drive home the demands of industry and every effort must be made to end this practice, since they can be disastrous.
The government and all agencies involved in the resolution of knotty issues must work hard to avoid any further strikes.
