TUTAG urges gov’t to honour agreement on condition of service
The Technical University Teacher’s Association of Ghana of Ghana (TUTAG) has urged the Government to honour the agreement emanating from a ruling of the National Labour Commission reached between the government and the association in 2019.
Members of the Association are not happy the government had failed to extend allowances given to the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) to them, long after it had completed negotiations with the UTAG.
These were contained in a communique issued by the TUTAG at end of its 43rd congress copied to the Ghana News Agency in Kumasi.
The communique, signed by its National President, Dr. Collins Ameyaw and the General Secretary, Dr. Zakaria Abubakar, said the situation was derailing the trust that members had in the government.
While admitting that the government had shown commitment to achieving parity of prestige for the technical university staff, the communique said total parity had not been achieved, considering the fact that there were many conditions of service which were still based on the former polytechnic status.
The situation, according to the communique, was negatively affecting the living conditions of members of TUTAG and that members resolved at the congress to give the government a warning sign to indicate the seriousness they attached to their condition of service.
“TUTAG acknowledged and commended the role of the Minister for Education in helping to revise the draconian scheme of service,” part of the communique acknowledged.
It, however, indicated that members realized that despite these revisions, the object of tying it along KNUST scheme of service, appointments and promotions stood defeated since the lecturer without PhD could not progress from the lectureship grade to the next level and beyond.
“We strongly felt it was unfair to create such a bottleneck for the technical university lecturer if this arrangement did not exist in KNUST, where the amendment provisions were adopted,” it said.
The communique again praised the education minister and the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) for facilitating the process of programme accreditation submitted by the technical universities to the GTEC.
It was the view of the TUTAG, however, that the GTEC could do more in getting post-graduate accreditation applications from the technical universities to go through quickly and smoothly.
Congress also called on the government to improve infrastructure on various campuses of technical universities to bring them up to standard to be able to run effectively.