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The Ghana National Union of Technical Students (GNUTS) has called for calm among its members following the ongoing strike action by lecturers and administrators in technical universities.
Members of the Technical University Senior Administrators Association of Ghana (TUSAAG) started an indefinite strike yesterday, January 8, 2020, over unpaid allowances.
The Technical University Teachers Association of Ghana (TUTAG) has also been on strike since Monday, January 6, 2020, also over unpaid allowances.
These actions by the two groups have distorted activities in the various universities, even preventing some of the technical institutions from conducting examinations as scheduled on their academic calendar.
Speaking on Eyewitness News on Wednesday, the Coordinating Secretary of GNUTS, Karima Mohammed asked her colleagues to remain calm as they are also doing their best to ensure the strike actions are called off.
“I’m assuring students that they should calm down because this time around we need to do all possible means to put a stop to this. Even if it means we have to petition Parliament to take a resolution on this to solve it once and for all, we will do it because we can’t always be the sacrificing factor.”
“It’s like they are sacrificing us the students and at the end, it is our parents that are suffering. So I’m urging the students that they should calm down,” she said.
TUSAAG and TUTAG are currently on an indefinite strike in protest of the non-payment of allowances due their members following the conversion of polytechnics to technical universities.
According to TUSAAG, the amount received by its members in December is below allowances paid to colleagues in other public universities who hold similar positions as lecturers.
The leaders of TUSAAG have vowed not to call off the strike till the government complies with the National Labour Commission’s (NLC) ruling to pay their members the agreed allowances.
The ongoing strike by TUTAG comes as a repetition of one they embarked on in October and December 2019.
Their strike in October was even joined by members of the Technical Universities Administrators Association of Ghana (TUAAG) who were also demanding full benefits of migration onto the public universities’ salary structure.
On December 27, 2019, the Association declared an immediate resumption of its suspended strike after initially calling off the strike started in October.
But the December 27 strike was called off after about six hours, only to be started again this year.
According to them, the government has “refused to fully comply” with the ruling by the National Labour Commission (NLC) to ensure that members of the association started receiving allowances due them from December 2019, January 2020 and February 2020.
They have also vowed to only call off the strike “upon the fulfilment of the National Labour Commission ruling on the 28th of October 2019”.
