NAGRAT warns Concerned Teachers

Patrick Agboyibor (2nd Right), Regional Chairman of NAGRAT addressing the news conference. With him are some of the regional executives.

Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com

By William Yaw Owusu

Friday April 1, 2011
The leadership crisis that hit the teacher’s front following their migration onto the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS) is worsening by the day as pressure continue to pile on the beleaguered executives of both of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) and the National association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT).

Teachers in the country continue take issues with both the government and their leaderships by organizing series of demonstrations over the implementation of the Single Spine Pay Policy (SSPP) which the teachers feel they have been shortchanged.

A group calling itself Coalition of Concerned Teachers whose membership cuts across both GNAT and NAGRAT are calling on executives of the two associations to resign because they claim the leaders have outlived their usefulness in negotiating better conditions of service for teachers. They even hit the streets again on Wednesday to ask their leaders to vacate resign.

However, the executives of the Greater Accra branch of NAGRAT have warned that they would not sit unconcerned for anybody including the Concerned Teachers Association to oust them or their national leaders saying “the constant demand that NAGRAT leadership should resign is misplaced”.

Addressing a news conference in Accra yesterday to show their ‘unflinching’ support for their national leaders, Patrick Agboyibor, Regional Chairman of NAGRAT accused the agitating teachers of “misinforming teachers for reasons known to them alone.”

He said the concerned teacher at various platforms peddled falsehood citing one Ernest Opoku who they say is a member of GNAT leading the charges is reported to have claimed that teachers’ salaries for March were paid without the 15 per cent retention premium and that the error were not corrected.

“NAGRAT finds this statement misleading and. Indeed, the initial agreement was that the payment of the retention premium in March would be independent on the correction of all the anomalies that occurred in the February salaries.”

He said the threat by the concerned teachers that they are going to merge GNAT and NAGRAT into a single union is just a bluff because “NAGRAT has a reason for protecting the existence of the union and would not allow any group to subvert the constitution for their personal aggrandizement.”

Mr. Agboyibor said “the concerned teachers should be reminded that base salaries are negotiated by organized labour not NAGRAT and GNAT alone”, and added that once the association’s constitution has given them the mandate to rule for the next four years nobody can remove them by illegal means.

He said instead of fighting the condition of service, harmonization and standardization of allowances, some teachers have reduced the issues to “relentless attacks on leadership through peddling of unfounded allegations and propagation of rumours to confuse members and the public.”