The Tertiary Education Workers Union of Ghana (TEWU-GH) has criticised the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) for refusing to recognise the union’s representatives on the governing councils of traditional public universities.
The union, on Thursday, July 3, declared an indefinite nationwide strike after the expiration of a seven-day ultimatum it issued on June 24, 2025.
The ultimatum demanded that relevant authorities address what TEWU-GH describes as a deliberate exclusion of its members from university governance structures.
Speaking on Eyewitness News on Friday, July 4, Charles Arthur, Chairman of TEWU-GH at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), accused the Director-General of the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC), Prof. Abdulai Jinapor, of breaching established labour regulations.
“We’re being cheated by Prof. Abdulai Jinapor, regulator of public universities in Ghana [Director General, GTEC ]. His office has refused to do the right thing, which is enshrined in the law. The right thing is in the law, and he’s not doing it,” he said.
The union insisted that the exclusion undermines its legal right to representation and sets a dangerous precedent for participatory governance within Ghana’s higher education system.
The union argues that despite holding majority membership across all traditional public universities in Ghana, the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) has sidelined its representatives in favour of those from the Teachers and Educational Workers’ Union under the Trades Union Congress (TEWU-TUC).
