TUSAAG withdraws services effective today

The Technical University Senior Administrators Association of Ghana (TUSAAG) has withdrawn its services effective today.

The move is to back their demands for better and well-suited conditions of services befitting their status as public university administrators.

At a press conference addressed by the association’s National President, Mr Edem Honu, after an emergency delegates conference in Cape Coast last Friday, the association expressed worry at what it described as the deliberate non involvement of the other labour unions of the technical universities in meetings to discuss issues bordering on the migration of staff of the technical universities to the public universities salary structure.

“We have written several letters to the National Council for Tertiary Education seeking audience to discuss concerns of TUSAAG members on the migration of staff but have received no responses to our letters,” he stated.

Mr Edem said the association believed the sidelining of the leadership of TUSAAG from discussions concerning the migration of the technical university staff was unhealthy and an attempt to do “what the government thinks and not what members deserved.”

No further delays

Mr Honu said it was disturbing that even though the Minister of Education issued a directive to the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) and the

Controller and Accountant General’s Department (CAGD) to immediately migrate qualified staff of the technical universities to the public universities salary structure, that had not been done, adding that the association’s call to be fully migrated to the public universities salary structure and conditions could not be delayed any further.

“We are in the 11th month since that directive was issued but we are yet to see it carried out.

After agitations upon agitations all the government could do was to migrate some of the staff to only the basic salaries and market premium without the accompanying allowances, which has worsened the conditions of staff of the technical universities,” he noted.

Deliberate delay

He said TUSAAG believed that the government was deliberately delaying the full migration of staff of the technical universities in order to distort their remunerations and continue to treat technical universities as second fiddle within the public universities system.

Mr Honu said TUSAAG notified the National Labour Commission and other relevant state agencies about the intention to embark on the industrial action, considering the fact that their grievances had not been addressed.

“In fact, we are mindful of events of the past in the polytechnic era where staff categories in the administrative and professional class were paid a market premium of 70 per cent instead of 96 per cent.

This time round TUSAAG will not sit down unconcerned for anything to be dumped on its members,” he said.

Infrastructure

He said the association was also worried that the government had since the conversion of the polytechnics into technical universities, not allocated any seed money to upgrade facilities such as laboratories, workshops, lecture halls, halls of residence, etc. to befit their new status as technical universities.

“Rather, the government has been preoccupied with staff audit with the aim to downgrade some staff.

As if that was not enough, the government through its agencies employed delay tactics in migrating staff of these technical universities to their respective salary grades and conditions of service for public universities,” he stated.

TUTAG

Meanwhile, the Technical Universities Teachers Association of Ghana (TUTAG) has also embarked on a strike action to back their demands for better conditions of service.

Classrooms were empty, except for a few students doing group studies on their own.