Govt gives a date to pay lump sum of teachers who retired in 2020

The government by April 27, 2024, will settle the outstanding lump sum of teachers who retired from January to December 31, 2020, Mr Thomas Musah, the General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has said.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Mr Musah said the central government has also promised to remit all union dues deductions from January 2024 to March 2024 into the accounts of the unions by April 27, 2024.

Briefing GNA on the lump sum at a stakeholder meeting on issues affecting teachers’ welfare, he said Mr Musah said the retired teachers, about 5,000, from January 2020 to December 2020 were shortchanged regarding the lump sum.

The General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has said that based on the calculations; the government was expected to pay approximately GHC56 million to settle the outstanding arrears of the retired teachers.

He said a five-member technical committee has been setup to conduct feasibility studies on the data of teachers relating to tier two pension contributions, past credit issues, and the implementation of the GLICO report, among others.

The member of the pre-tertiary teacher unions in the country said the five-member committee is expected to submit the report before May 1, 2024, to resolve the issues concerning the government teachers’ conditions of service.

In a related development, the teacher’s unions after calling off an industrial action which commenced mid-March this year to negotiate better conditions of service with the government say their engagements have yielded no positive results.

Expressing disappointment in a statement sighed by Thisterm.com, the teacher unions said the team negotiating on behalf of the government does not seem to have the requisite mandate to respond adequately to our demands.

“All this while, our negotiations have not achieved any meaningful outcome. More disappointing is the fact that the government Team does not seem to have the requisite mandate to respond adequately to our demands.

In the light of the above situation, we would like to caution the general public and the government that in the event of any brouhaha at the Pre-tertiary level, Teacher Union Leaders must not be blamed,” the unions said in the statement.