Teachers assured of government’s support

30-03-2011
Government believes that the role of teachers is very important and will therefore not relent on its efforts to ensuring their wellbeing in society. To this end, government is making frantic effort to correct all anomalies that characterized teachers’ salary in their migration onto the single spine salary structure. Given the assurance in an interview with Radio Ghana in Navrongo, the Deputy Director General, Quality and Access at the Ministry of Education, Mr. Stephen Adu, said government is on course in ensuring that teachers are not made worse off with regards to the single spine pay policy, stressing that efforts are being made to rectify all distortions associated with their salaries. Mr. Adu urged teachers to exercise restraint and also corporate with the government and the authorities working on the pay policy so that progress would be made. According to him it might take some time to regain all that is lost as a result of their absence from the classroom, saying, at the end of the day the Ghanaian child suffers the consequences. Teachers’ action, he lamented, tends to push the development of the county’s educational sector backwards and therefore entreated teachers to engage the authorities in a manner that can help drive the country’s education on a high pedestal. He assured teachers of government’s support and disclosed that serious discussions would from next month begin on all other allowances that they have put forward. Meanwhile, an official statement signed by the Deputy Minister of Information, Baba Jamal Ahmed, indicates that all personnel within the Ghana Education Service (GES) who qualify for the 15 per cent Retention Premium agreed with the government earlier this month, will enjoy it alongside their March salaries to be paid in the first week of April. According to the statement government is pleased to announce that the negotiating team has completed work on the teachers' salaries and the anomalies that characterized GES under the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS) have been rectified. It further stated that no personnel within the GES had as yet received his or her March salary, contrary to reports that teachers had been paid their March salaries without the 15 per cent Retention Premium.

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