EduWatch advises 3 Teacher Unions over Deprived Area Allowance

Africa Education Watch (EduWatch) following the leadership of teacher unions’ engagement with the central government over better Conditions of Service has urged them to negotiate Deprived Area Allowance for their members.

“The Teacher Unions should never accept any package without the Deprived Area Allowance deal for its members. We have not come this far to listen to excuses. Stand Firm!” the Executive Director of EduWatch, Kofi Asare said in a post.

His comment comes after unions called off a nationwide strike action they began mid-March this year amid a court injunction secured by the National Labour Commission (NLC) for them to engage with government representatives on their concerns.

In a statement to the media in Accra on Tuesday, King Ali Awudu, President of the Coalition of Concerned Teachers, Ghana, stressed the necessity for their employers to promptly engage in negotiations to address their concerns.

“As law-abiding citizens and having respect for the court, we hereby declare the strike that was called on 20th March 2024 off. We ask all our members and teachers of pre-tertiary education in this country to resume work with immediate effect

We continue to ask the employer-led by the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations to commence negotiations this afternoon, today April 2 2024. So we can expedite the negotiations and come to a conclusion to forestall any other happenings in the future,” he said.

GNAT, NAGRAT and CCT-GH in a joint press release sighted by Thisterm.com said the delay in the negotiation of a new collective agreement to have been completed on or before February 29, 2024, prompted their industrial action.

“The new Collective Agreement stands un-negotiated and we raised this concern in our letter to the Director General GES, dated February 29th, 2024 and also informed the National Labour Commission,” they said in the statement.

The teacher unions in the statement also urged the central government to refrain from frequent changes to the school calendar without the input of the teacher unions, saying it was affecting the smooth operation of the system.

It also said the inability of the government to complete the distribution of the laptops to all teachers is of concern, and the blockage of teachers’ salaries by the Office of the Special Prosecutor without recourse to laid down procedures is a major worry.

The pre-tertiary education teachers unions are, the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) and the Coalition of Concerned Teachers (CCT-GH).