Ranking Member on Parliamentary Select Committee on Education and Member of Parliament (MP) for Akatsi North, Peter Nortsu has urged the government and its ancillary agencies to be reconciliatory and be ready to listen as it meets with the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) to hash out issues concerning the strike action.
Mr. Nortsu cautioned that should government fail to lose its nonchalance in the ongoing impasse, the lecturers could remain on strike for a very long time.
He said this when he spoke on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East. The Legislator was confident that if the government goes into today’s [February 8, 2022] meeting with a listening ear and a show of commitment, the strike could be called off.
“Government has not shown any commitment so far. If they had shown commitment from day 1 when the strike started, they could have resolved the matter before today. Based on what happened last year and the road map they agreed upon, I do no think we would be where we are today,” he said.
Mr. Nortsu explained that the Parliamentary Select Committee in Parliament would intervene in the issues surrounding the strike should government fail to get the lecturers back to work. He said Parliament did not want to be intrusive and wanted to be certain that all other avenues had been exhausted.
“We want to be the last people to go into the matter. When they [government] are not able to intervene properly, we will do so to see if we can come to a compromise,” he said.
Meanwhile, the University Teacher Association of Ghana (UTAG) explained that it declined a meeting with the National Labour Commission (NLC) because the NLC has lost its moral right to operate as an independent arbiter. This was after a court asked both parties to settle their issues out of court and return to present the conclusions and recommendations of same to the court at the later date
Dr. Jonas Bugase, the UTAG branch President at the C.K Tedam University for Technology and Applied Sciences (CKT-UTAS) who spoke on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East said the decision by the NLC to drag the teachers to court when it knew that the employers had failed to hold up their end of an agreement in an earlier Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) was unfortunate.
Dr. Bugase expressed UTAGS’s disappointment in the NLC after the decision to sue the teachers.
UTAG is expected to meet the Minister of Education, Minister of Employment and Labour Relations and other stakeholders today, in an attempt to resolve the current issues.
A1radioonline.com|101.1 MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith |Bolgatanga|Ghana
