Three teacher unions have threatened to lay down their tools following the appointment of Dr. Eric Nkansah as the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service.
They are, the National President of the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), the Ghana National Association of Teachers and the Coalition of Concerned Teachers.
According to the teacher unions, failure of the President to revoke the appointment will lead to an industrial action on November 4, 2022.
In an interview with Citi News, the National President of the NAGRAT, Angel Carbonu said the government must listen to the unions.
He also lashed out at the Education Ministry PRO, Kwasi Kwarteng, who has in the past criticised the unions’ stance.
Mr. Kwarteng recently said the unions should focus on teacher welfare and not government appointments.
Responding to him, Mr Carbonu asked, “when you are appointing someone to come and superintend over me, a professional, you Kwasi Kwarteng, a political actor, do you think you have what it takes to tell me what I should do or what I should not do?”
According to the teacher unions, directors both at the District and Regional levels are unhappy with Dr Nkansah, the unions are also not happy and they are calling for his immediate removal.
“If sanity and peace is to prevail at the industrial level in the GES, we do not want to have industrial disputes just because of the presence of Dr Nkansah because he doesn’t even deserve that attention in the first place.
“We’re asking the minister to advise the presidency that a wrong has been made for it to be corrected. We are saying that if by the end of next week Friday Dr Eric Nkansah continues to be in office as the DG of GES, there will be an industrial unrest within the GES,” he said.
Meanwhile, the teacher unions are lamenting the lack of progress on pending issues after the sacking of Professor Akwasi Opoku Amankwa.
“Some of the issues that we were talking about with Prof Opoku Amankwa are the delay of the laptop distribution, upgrading of teachers, teachers in deprived communities, lower ranks promotion and CPD points accumulation.
“On one Monday, we met DG of GEs on all issues and we started looking at how to solve them. For example, the issues of teachers at deprived communities, their final report was supposed to be presented to us on a Friday.
“The Monday that we met the DG, the Friday of that same week the committee set up by the union was supposed to present their final report on the deprived communities so we can forward it to the presidency and then to cabinet for it to be implemented, so that teachers in the deprived communities can get twenty percent of their base pay to make them happy to work in the rural areas. All these things have come to a halt,” CCT-Ghana President revealed.
“We all have seen the CV of Dr Eric Nkansah and there’s nothing in his CV that indicated that he has read education, not diploma in education, not post graduate diploma in education, not bachelor of education, not master of education, not PHD in education.
“So you cannot sack someone who has a PHD in education and go and bring someone who has next to nothing of education and ask the person to come and manage educational affairs. That we will not agree,” the teacher unions concluded.
