The Pre-Tertiary Teachers Association of Ghana (PRETAG) has voiced worry over what it calls the Ghana Education Service’s (GES) inability to outline a clear plan for settling arrears owed to teachers.
The group said the holdup in clearing the unpaid amounts was causing anxiety among impacted teachers and could have broader effects on the stability of the education system.
This comes after a protest by the Coalition of Unpaid Teachers to the Ministry of Finance, where they submitted a petition over what they termed long neglect and denial of their due earnings.
Speaking in an interview with TV3, which was monitored by Ghanaianradar, the PRETAG Vice President, Adokwei Ayikwei Awulley, said the situation was unacceptable and urged swift steps to organise the payment process.
He stressed the need for clarity and order in tackling the arrears, cautioning that the present method risked hurting industrial peace within the sector.
“Can you not just sit them down and give them a roadmap? Things must be streamlined. We need teachers, and we have to employ teachers for them to go and teach. It is wrong for one teacher to be handling three, four or even five classrooms because there are no teachers,” he said.
He also expressed concerns about the government’s intended hiring of 7,000 teachers, calling the number too low to fix the current staffing shortfalls.According to him, the limited recruitment will not adequately clear the backlog of jobless trained teachers or the wider problems confronting schools across the country.
