By William Yaw Owusu
Wednesday, 01 November 2006
AN Accra Fast Track High Court yesterday declared the strike by the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) illegal and ordered its leadership and members to call off the strike. An "illegality" cannot be allowed just because it is meant to achieve a good objective, the court stated.
The ruling of the court, presided over by Justice Richard Asamoah, implies that members of NAGRAT are to return to the classroom immediately.
However, NAGRAT has stated its intention to appeal.
After the ruling, considered to be a test case of the National Labour Commission’s (NLC) powers, Evans Dzikunu, a counsel for NAGRAT told the Times: "We are going to appeal against this ruling."
The suit against NAGRAT was filed by the NLC on October 11 asking the court, among other things, to compel NAGRAT to comply with the Chief Labour Officer’s directive which asked them to go back to the classroom to teach.
The court in ordering NAGRAT to call off the strike said: "it is needless for the court to say that NAGRAT has a genuine cause; but to achieve this it must adopt proper, legal means.’
"No one must be allowed to use illegality to achieve good ends otherwise it will give room to lawlessness in the country," said Justice Asamoah.
He said it was not proper for NAGRAT to treat the Chief Labour Officer’s order with contempt because the NLC has the powers of a high court adding that, "the order issued by the NLC was valid."
Justice Asamoah noted that sections 139 and 172 of the Labour Act did not set "condition precedent", explaining that NAGRAT’s contention that there needed to be a complaint from the Ghana Education Service (GES) who are the employers of NAGRAT before the NLC instituted the court action, did not apply.
The NLC’s motion, moved by its counsel J. Opoku Agyei on October 25 said, among other things, that NAGRAT did not indicate that any dispute existed between it and the GES which should have been refered to the
No comments:
Post a Comment