GNAT WORRIED OVER DELAY IN PAYING NEW TEACHERS (SEPT 21 PAGE 17)

THE Ghana National association of Teachers (GNAT) has expressed concern over the practice where many new young teachers posted across the country have to work for a long time before receiving their first salaries.
Such practice, the association observed, demoralised and demotivated young teachers, and therefore made it difficult for them to offer their best as part of efforts to raise the standard of education in the country.
The President of GNAT, Mr Joseph Kweku Adjei, who expressed these concerns, said visits made throughout the country by executives of the association and reports reaching its office showed that many young teachers often worked for long periods before receiving their first pay.
Such an unfortunate situation was subjecting the young teachers to extreme financial hardship, demoralising and affecting them generally, he noted.
Speaking at the 3rd quadrennial delegates’ conference of the Eastern Regional branch of the GNAT at Koforidua at the weekend, Mr Adjei said the prompt payment of salaries to new teachers would make them contribute meaningfully towards efforts aimed at raising the standard of education in the country.
The GNAT therefore expects the government and the Ghana Education Service (GES) to ensure that young teachers are not given a baptism of fire that will dissuade them from performing excellently.
“We believe that solving the delay in the payment of the first salaries of young teachers has the added advantage of magnetising a number of young senior high school graduates to make teaching a profession of choice”, Mr Adjei stated.
He said the endemic shortage of professional teachers was a serious handicap which had continued to bedevil the education system.
He noted that such problems had arisen mainly because many teachers who entered the universities had to use their own resources “because the quota system could not allow them to be paid for the four years and have been refused posting after graduation”.
According to him, 567 professional graduate teachers who had completed their studies and had duly submitted their posting forms to the GES for posting had been denied the chance to go and teach.
“Many of the district directors of education who have been approached by the beleaguered teachers have turned them back with the excuse that they cannot guarantee their salaries”, he added.
The GNAT president also called for an increment in the responsibility allowances given to teachers, noting that the present allowance being paid to teachers were “an insult to the recipients”.
Mr Adjei commended the government for its commitment of launching a new national pension scheme and however expressed the hope that the authorities and committees put in place to ensure the success of the scheme would allow transparency, equity, fairness and justice to prevail in the discharge of their duties.
The Eastern Regional Minister, Mr Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, noted that one of the major factors confronting the education system in the country was the lack of infrastructure, logistics and teachers at the basic level of education.
He, however, expressed the commitment of the government to address these challenges in order to make education more accessible to every Ghanaian child.