Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By
William Yaw Owusu
Thursday, October 10, 2013
The National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT)
is daring the Ghana Education Service (GES) to continue with the
‘rationalization and redeployment’ of teachers in the service and face their
wrath.
According to NAGRAT, it has already served notice to
their members to disregard any directive to redeploy them and has also called
on already-affected members not to leave their stations.
Eric Angel Carbonu, NAGRAT vice president, briefing
the media in Accra yesterday said that the so-called programme by the GES to rationalize
and redeploy teachers had been done without any consultation of the association,
describing the move as ‘haphazard.’
“NAGRAT, having observed with trepidation the
haphazard and uncoordinated way the rationalization and redeployment programme
is being pursued calls on the Ministry of Education and the GES to halt the
programme with immediate effect, so as to allow for further consultation and
development of acceptable modalities by all stakeholders on the way forward.”
Flanked by other executives of NAGRAT, Mr. Carbonu accused
the GES of “taking the law into their own hands and sitting down for some heads
of schools to hide behind the programme to victimize some of their members
without reason.”
“As we speak, some District Directors and Heads of
schools have taken advantage of the situation to settle personal scores.
Teachers are being asked to leave because their directors do not like them.”
Mr. Carbonu said that some female teachers who were
on maternity leave legitimately suffered open release from their schools under
the guise of rationalization and redeployment.
He said currently, there is disquiet among members
of NAGRAT and the reasons given for the programme was untenable.
“Their excuse for undertaking this exercise was that
the reversion from four to three year Senior High School policy to the three
years has created over staffing in many schools hence the need to rationalize
staffing in the service.”
“Laudable as the idea may be, it is important for
our educational authorities to note that this exercise is going to destabilize
teachers, many of whom have not planned to move from their current place of
work. Many families are going to be unduly disturbed in terms of moving
children to other schools and transferring spouses to join others.”
He said in the ensuing confusion, there was no
accommodation arrangements discussed with the teachers.”
Mr. Carbonu said that teachers should not be made to
suffer for a problem which was clearly generated by politicians saying “NAGRAT
wants to make it categorically clear that politicians are solely to blame for
these difficulties as they chose to play musical chairs with the duration of
SHS programme and other educational policies and blatantly ignored the inputs
of teachers as they have just been doing on this exercise.”
Apart from the programme, NAGRAT says that the
government has failed to the arrears of the incremental credits of teachers for
2011 and 2012 and the delay in the payment of car maintenance allowance and its
attendant arrears to beneficiaries in the service was an issue.
He said that the failure of the GES to properly place
teachers who had been promoted to their respective ranks and scales as well as
the failure of the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA) to transfer
contributions deducted for the 2nd Tier pensions scheme to the GES
pension trust to manage, was also outstanding.
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