GNAT advises parents to keep their wards at home as they are not ready to return from strike

Due to the strike action by its members, the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has requested that parents keep their children at home for the whole week. Prosper Tachie, the association’s Ashanti Regional Chairman, indicated that teachers won’t be going back to the classroom for at least the rest of this week. Therefore, parents are not required to let their kids sit in empty classrooms. Mr. Tachie claimed that the strike would probably carry on until the government agreed to comply with the teachers’ demand for a 20 percent cost-of-living allowance (COLA). Due to a strike that GNAT called on Monday, July 4, classrooms in public schools across the country have been vacant for the previous two days and are probably going to remain empty for the rest of the week. The strike this week is simply the beginning of GNAT’s negotiation strategy, according to Mr. Tachie. We’ll go on strike for the remainder of the week before deciding what to do next over the weekend. We won’t stop until the government sits down with us for negotiations. Since the beginning of the year, organized labor has been attempting to contact the government, but they have ignored us; as a result, we have gone on strike, he stated. He said that during the past two years, teachers had voluntarily accepted compensation hikes of 4% and 7%, respectively. We agreed to a 7 percent increase since we expected inflation to soar by 15 percent in 2022. Tachie reported a 27.5 percent increase in inflation. Speaking about Luv with David Akuetteh The amount of wage rise is not comparable to the rate of inflation growth, which has considerably reduced teachers’ purchasing power, revealed Prosper Tachie, the Ashanti Regional Chairman of GNAT, in the morning. No teacher I am aware of is not included on a loan slip. Our pay only lasts for the first ten days of the month; after that, we have to work as magicians to survive,” he said. He said that the government and teachers do not have a master-slave relationship and that the government must acknowledge that the remuneration for teachers is below the poverty line. Mr. Tachie believed that the strike action was disrespectful to the government, especially considering that the nation had applied for an IMF bailout. “The government produces income to pay our wages by the middle of the month, and payment delays are the result of ineptitude in the accounts office.” “People must understand that teachers are living like beggars, and it is the government’s responsibility to look after them,” he said. Mr. Tachie understood parents’ concerns about their children’s schooling. “We are aware that examinations are approaching and that the country is going through a difficult period… It is critical that the government listens to us and solves our concerns. We have tolerated maltreatment for far too long… it must end now.” Mr. Tachie claims that teachers will not accept anything less than the planned 20 percent COLA increase. “We’ve submitted a suggestion; now it’s up to the government,” he stated. “I can’t tell if we’ll take less than 20%, but I can say that a lot may happen at the negotiating table.” You cannot tell us that the government is in debt and unable to satisfy our requests since Article 71 employees, although earning more, receive higher raises.”