By Nathaniel Nartey
The University Teachers Association of Ghana UTAG says its strike which takes effect today will be indefinite until the government honored its side of agreements concerning their conditions of Service. This is because the UTAG has since November last year notified the government of its intention to strike over its conditions of service and received no response from the government. President of the University of Ghana chapter of UTAG Dr Samuel Nkuumban expressed disappointment at the feedback from the Minister of Employment in their last meeting saying there was no money to pay the allowances UTAG is asking for.
”The strike is still in force,…..since November we have been serving notices to remind the government that we had December ending as our end of the road…unfortunately all of those notices have not been formally responded to as to why we find ourselves in this situation”.
He said ”for the very first time that the Minister of Finance attended our meeting and UTAG was asked to make a presentation which we did, there was no conversation as to say this is what we can afford. What we got from the Minister was where we expected the money to come from and so for us, there was no negotiation at that point “.
Dr. Nkuumban explained the reasons UTAG has commenced its nationwide strike.
”The real issues have got to do with our Conditions of Service, we submitted a proposal to the government in 2019 indicating that our conditions of service were deplorable and so the government needed to engage us. It took nearly 2 years and follow-ups suggested that we were studying our document until we threatened to embark on an action of this kind. So we started effectively engaging in 2021 and many of the times that they call us to the meetings, particularly the Ministry of Finance will not show up”, he explained.
