Editorial: Coalition Of Unpaid Teachers And Government Must Dialogue

The Coalition of Unpaid Teachers has issued a firm warning to the government, threatening legal action if outstanding concerns are not resolved by the end of January. The group insists its agitation should not be misconstrued as hostility toward the government, but rather as a response to what it describes as the low prioritisation of its plight.

The coalition’s demands include the payment of salary arrears owed to teachers who have worked for months without pay, the issuance of remaining staff identification cards and the inclusion of omitted names on the official master and revalidation lists. These administrative lapses, they argue, have left thousands of trained teachers in financial distress.

Speaking to the media on January 5, 2026 the Convener of the Coalition, Enoch Kofi Nartey, acknowledged the broader challenges confronting Ghana’s education sector.

However, he stressed that these competing pressures cannot justify the continued neglect of teachers who are already in classrooms delivering essential services.

Mr Nartey noted that employment constitutes a binding contract and warned that failure to honour that contract gives affected workers the legal right to seek redress through the courts.

To The Chronicle, the warning issued by the Coalition of Unpaid Teachers is not merely an industrial threat but it is a sobering indictment of how administrative inefficiencies continue to undermine our public education system.

At the heart of this issue is a fundamental question of governance – how can a state that professes commitment to quality education continue to rely on the unpaid labour of its teachers?

For years, the phenomenon of unpaid teachers has recurred with alarming regularity. Newly recruited teachers, especially those posted to deprived and rural communities, often spend six months to over a year without salaries.

In many cases, the problem is not the absence of budgetary allocation but bureaucratic delays missing names, incomplete validation processes and delays in issuing staff identification numbers. These are administrative failures, not acts of God.

The government’s position that the education sector faces “many challenges” may be factually correct, but it is morally insufficient.

It is also worth noting that Ghana’s education outcomes cannot improve if teachers are treated as expendable. Government initiatives on curriculum reform, STEM education, and digital learning will ring hollow if the very people expected to implement them are demoralised and financially strained.

The Chronicle believes what is required now is decisive action, not further assurances. The Ministries of Education and Finance, working with the Ghana Education Service and the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department, must streamline validation processes, publish transparent timelines for arrears payments and establish a permanent system that prevents such backlogs from recurring.

The Coalition of Unpaid Teachers has shown restraint by acknowledging the broader pressures on government. But patience has limits. If January passes without concrete action, legal redress will be both justified and inevitable.

 

 

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