BREAKING NEWS! TEACHER UNIONS IN GES DECLARE INDEFINITE STRIKE FROM TOMORROW 28TH OCTOBER, 2014. CORE ISSUES ARE: 1. Incremental Credit Arrears For 2011 And 2012 2. Vehicle Maintenance Allowance 3. The Payment Of Not More Than Three Months Arrears 4. Re-Negotiation Of The Collective Agreement 5. Non-Payment Of Grants To Deserving Teachers FULL TEXT: PRESS STATEMENT BY THE TEACHER UNIONS OF THE GHANA EDUCATION SERVICE (GES) ON UNRESOLVED GRIEVANCES Ladies and Gentlemen of the Media Houses present: We are delighted to welcome you all to this all important Press Conference which is premised on the protracted unresolved grievance of the teaching employees of the Ghana Education Service (GES) namely Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) and Coalition of Concerned Teachers (CCT)). It may surprise you to note that some of these issues dates back to the inception of the Single Spine Salary Structure in February 2011. 1.0 INCREMENTAL CREDIT ARREARS FOR 2011 AND 2012 The Government’s White paper on the Single Spine Pay Policy published in November 2009 clearly states under section 4.6 paragraph 3 as follows; “Government endorses the introduction of a robust public service wide performance management, monitoring and evaluation system. Once the system is in place, annual salary increments for public servants will no longer be automatic, but based on annual performance assessment”. Ladies and Gentlemen, almost four (4) years into the implementation of the new pay policy Fair Wages and Salaries Commission and Public Services Commission have failed to come out with the performance appraisal instruments. Apart from that the Fair Wages also failed to comply with their own directives of using the salary grades and pay points of 2009 in effecting the migration of Public servants from their existing salary structures onto the Single Spine Salary Structure. The teacher unions felt cheated because they were migrated onto the SSSS using their 2009 grades and pay points. The issue was contested at the Public Services Joint Standing Negotiation Committee (PSJSNC) meeting and the matter was referred to a Technical Committee. The report of the Technical Committee led to the payment of the Arrears for 2013 with the tacit understanding that the payment of the remaining arrears for 2011 and 2012 will be negotiated for after the payment of the 2013 arrears. At a meeting with the Ministers of Education and Employment and Labour Relations, representatives of CAGD, Finance Ministry, Attorney-General’s Department, FWSC and the NPRA on one hand and the Teacher Unions on the other on 15th June, 2014, the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission was asked to liaise with Controller and Accountant-General’s Department to let the Ministry of Finance know the total cost of the incremental credits for 2011 and 2012. The Fair Wages and Salaries Commission forwarded the cost analysis to the Ministry of Finance and the Finance Ministry has turned deaf ears to this. We want to assure the Government and the Ministry of Finance that the incremental credit is part of our legitimate salaries and therefore we would not let it go. Since that time, all efforts to get the Ministry of Finance to pay the money has fallen on deaf ears. 2.0 VEHICLE MAINTENANCE ALLOWANCE Ladies and Gentlemen, you would recall that it took a strike in March 2013 to make the Government make an attempt to pay us the 2012 Vehicle Maintenance Allowance. The 2013 and 2014 vehicle maintenance allowances are in arrears. We call on Government to release funds for the payment of the vehicle maintenance allowance. For how long can an employee sustain the use of his own vehicle for rendering services to Government without the refund of GH ¢40.00 per month as vehicle maintenance allowance? These are some of the de-motivating factors impeding the performance of employees in the public service especially the Ghana Education Service. 3.0 THE PAYMENT OF NOT MORE THAN THREE MONTHS ARREARS Ladies and Gentlemen, Government came out with a directive to Controller and Accountant-General not to pay more than three (3) month’s salary arrears to teachers who were newly recruited, upgraded, or re- engaged into the service and had worked for more than three (3) months without salaries. The reason they gave was that some of those appointments were not genuine. Templates were developed for the affected teachers to fill and attach the templates with all the relevant documents to be subjected to audit. This was in June 2014. Almost four (4) months down the line the Ministry of Finance is yet to complete the audit to enable the affected teachers to be paid their salary arrears. The Leadership of the Teacher Unions in GES sees this as a ploy to unnecessarily delay and deny the teachers what is rightfully due them. The initial number of forms or templates submitted to the Finance Ministry was fourteen thousand, eight hundred and forty- three (14,843). Some of them have worked for more than two (2) years. Between June and October 2014, we have been informed only one thousand, four hundred and twenty-six (1, 426) were validated and out of that number six hundred and sixty-one (661) were validated for payment while seven hundred and sixty-five (765) were rejected without any reason being offered for its rejection. This represents about 10%. So if within four months they validated only 10% of the templates then you can imagine when they are going to finish the process. We see this as a deliberate ploy to frustrate these young up and coming teachers from discharging their duties as professional teachers. These are the same teachers whom had their names dropped from the GES mechanized pay roll at the end of September 2014 with the excuse that GES did not seek clearance from the Ministry of Finance before they were recruited. The Leadership of the teacher unions will like to inform the powers that be that the GES was given a special dispensation to do replacement of staff that for one reason or the other might have their names off the pay roll. It is therefore regrettable that the Chief Director of the ministry of Finance made reference to a letter written in 2006 and directed the GES to stop indefinitely replacement of staff in the GES. We wish to draw his attention to the fact that, the replacement is done with tacit understanding that recruited staff will run or continue the same budget line of the replaced staff. The Teacher Unions therefore call for the immediate payment of the salary arrears of the affected teachers. 4.0 RE-NEGOTIATION OF THE COLLECTIVE AGREEMENT The Collective Agreement between Ghana Education Service as the employer and the Teacher Unions in the Ghana Education Service expired in November 2011. GNAT engaged GES management in a discussion and agreed that the monetary aspects of the Collective Agreement should be discussed with Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) whilst the other aspects of the agreement are negotiated through the Standing Joint Negotiating Committee of the GES. Since that decision was taken the committee has not been able to meet despite several requests to GES to live up to its mandate as expressed in the Labour Act (2003) Act 651. As a result of this all the other issues like the payment of Transfer grants, T & T, Incremental Credits Arrears for 2011 and 2012 were not completed. All efforts to bring the parties back to the negotiating table have not been successful. 5.0 NON-PAYMENT OF GRANTS TO DESERVING TEACHERS Ladies and Gentlemen of the Press, the Teacher Unions in the GES are not against the transfer of teachers. Indeed the collective agreement stipulates that once you agree to become a teacher and for that matter an employee of the GES, you can be posted or transferred to anywhere in the country where your services are deemed to be needed. Whereas the employer has the duty to transfer, it should be borne in mind that transfers will involve some funding especially where the transfer involves a change of abode and movement of household effects. In this situation, then the teacher who has been transferred is entitled to Transfer grant that will enable him/her to re-locate his/her family and property. Teachers have been transferred over the years without payment of transfer grants even though the teachers have honoured the transfers. All efforts by the unions to have the entitlements paid to deserving teachers have been misconstrued as the unions interfering in the day to day running of the GES. 6.0 CONCLUSION The patience of the Leadership of the Teacher Unions has stretched beyond reasonable limits. It is regrettable to note that the agencies and the individuals who are responsible for the resolution of these have so far not shown any firm commitment to resolving the issues. The Teacher Unions wrote to the National Labour Commission on 23rd September, 2014 telling them about our intention to undertake an industrial action. It took them 16 clear days before they responded to the letter by inviting us to a meeting for a hearing on the issues on Wednesday, 15th October, 2014. The Unions have had two unsuccessful meetings with the National Labour Commission. At these meetings there were no representatives from the Ministry of Finance in spite of the fact that they were officially served with notices. The absence of the representatives from the Ministry of Finance has made it absolutely impossible for the issues to be resolved. The Teacher Unions see this as a deliberate ploy to thwart the efforts of the National Labour Commission to resolve the issues amicably. In the present circumstances the Leadership is not in a position to restrain the teachers, who have resolved to embark on an industrial action effective 28th October, 2014 within an on- going strike action announced by the FORUM on Wednesday, 22nd October, 2014. M. V. V. K. DEMANYA DATED: 27TH OCTOBER, 2014 GENERAL SECRETARY (GNAT) DATED: 27TH OCTOBER, 2014 CHRISTIAN ADDAI POKU PRESIDENT (NAGRAT) DATED: 27TH OCTOBER, 2014 ERNEST OPOKU PRESIDENT (CCT)
Posted on: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 14:07:42 +0000
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