Return to negotiation table - Government tells CETAG

The government has described the nationwide strike action of the Colleges of Education Teachers Association of Ghana (CETAG) as illegal and, therefore, must be called off.

At a press conference last Friday by representatives of the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Finance, the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC), Conference of Principals of Colleges of Education (PRINCOF) and the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC), the government called on the college teachers to return to the negotiation table, indicating that their strike action was borne out of bad faith.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the FWSC, Benjamin Arthur, who addressed the media, said the government had demonstrated goodwill towards their condition of service by showing commitment towards the National Labour's Arbitration Awards, which had resulted from negotiations.

The outstanding issue, he said, was the migration of CETAG members onto the Public Universities Grade structure, in which discussions were ongoing for appropriate things to be done.

CETAG Case

The leadership of CETAG last Friday declared a nationwide indefinite strike in all the 46 public colleges of education in the country. This was as a result of their claim of the failure of the Employer to comply with the National Labour Commission (NLC) decisions and orders given by the compulsory arbitration awards agreed by the parties.

The orders were the payment of one-month salary to each entitled member of CETAG as compensation for additional duty performed in 2022, the agreed rates of allowances payable to public universities to be applied to deserving members of CETAG and the commencement of the implementation of the completed staff audit exercise from January 1, 2023.

Deserving members

Mr Arthur said although the government had complied with all these demands, the agreed rates of allowances payable to public universities could only be applied to deserving members of CETAG.

This, therefore, would be after they had been successfully migrated onto public universities grade structure, which would, however, be subjected to all the minimum requirements as applicable in the public universities.

He explained that the staff audit exercise could be carried out once the migration exercise was completed. The GTEC, he said, had written to the Ministry of Finance to pay a top-up research allowance to CETAG members and, therefore, were all part of the negotiations agreed on.

CETAG further indicated that the strike was also a result of the failure of PRINCOF and GTEC to rescind their decision of unilaterally varying CETAG’s existing office-holding positions and allowances in violation of the Harmonised Statutes of Colleges of Education and the 2023 Collective Bargaining Agreement signed with the FWSC, which had the approval from the Ministry of Finance in July, with an ending date of December 31, 2024.

However, Mr Arthur explained that per the scheme of service of the colleges of education, Chief Tutors and Principal Tutors were those who qualified for the office-holding positions and were eligible to be paid office-holding allowances.

“Tutors and Senior Tutors who are called upon to fill such positions could only be paid Acting Allowances since they were not qualified to hold such positions,” he said. The President of PRINCOF, Prof. Samuel Atintono, said they were surprised at the actions of the tutors as "we have exhaustively discussed their issues and given roadmaps concerning the migration".

Most of their demands, he said, had been complied with and, therefore, needed to be patient since they had achieved a lot in terms of their conditions of service.