Teachers’ strike continues despite progress in negotiations with govt

The Communications Officer for the Coalition of Concerned Teachers Ghana, Adokwei Ayikwei Awuley, has signalled a potential end to the nationwide strike in the coming days, following a series of negotiations with the government,

According to him, while some progress has been made, the strike will only be called off after further engagement with their respective councils.

On Wednesday, March 20, 2024, three teacher unions started a nationwide strike over what they describe as the government’s disregard for their service conditions.

Since then the teacher unions have been in a series of meetings with the government to resolve the outstanding issues so they can return to the classroom.

After a crunch meeting with the National Labour Commission (NLC), the minister of education and other leaders on Tuesday, March 26, 2024, the groups have had some of their promises being met.

However, the communications officer of CCT noted that even though the meeting with the government appears to be fruitful, they will only return to the classroom after engaging with the various teacher councils.

Responding to Umaru Sanda on Citi Eyewitness News, about whether or not they were going to call off the strike, he said: “They directed that we should call off the strike and we said that will go through the necessary processes to meet our various councils and then make a move on that.

“We will start the main negotiation from tomorrow and we have told the commission that we are going to meet our various councils and then we will take it from there and call off the strike if the understanding is reached with them” he added.

Mr Awuley added that they have managed to resolve three key issues with the government.

However, the conditions of service remain a sticking point, with six unresolved items that are set to be negotiated.

“The issues as stated in our press release before we embarked on the strike remain the same. We have been able to trash out three of them; that is the issue of the scheme of service, where the Ghana Education Service has agreed that by April 8, they will present the draft to the teacher unions.

“Then we have also agreed per what the minister of education put before the committee that by June 2024, all teachers would have our laptops. Then the issue of those whose salaries were blocked by the Office of the Special Prosecutor, the minister said we should give him a month and he is going to resolve that issue, and we have also agreed to that one.

“The outstanding one is our conditions of service. We have six of them and the commission has directed that from tomorrow 2 PM we should sit and start negotiating for those allowances and in two weeks, we should report to the commission about the progress of the negotiation,” he stated.

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