Government has reached an agreement with teacher trainees for them to be posted as national service personnel, the Minister of Education, Matthew Opoku Prempeh has said.
Speaking at the Meet The Press series in Accra on Tuesday, the Minister stated that about 16,000 of the trainee teachers have already registered with the National Service Secretariat (NSS).
“I met with the Coalition of Newly Trained Teachers and the Teacher Trainee Association of Ghana, and they went and met with the GES and finally signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to do the national service,” he explained.
Hundreds of the unemployed teachers massed up at the Obra Spot at Circle in Accra last Wednesday, to demand postings from the government.
The teachers had said they would resist attempts to post them to educational institutions as National Service personnel.
The teachers argued that having to do a year of national service would be unfair as they had already completed a year of teaching practice.
“Although we were supposed to be posted in September, we’ve been in the house since we completed school in July. But all that we hear is that we should go back and do national service although we have done our teaching practice,” one of them told Citi News.
Unfazed by the protests, Matthew Opoku Prempeh insisted that the teachers would have to complete their year of service if they wish to be employed.
According to him, the trainee teachers would have to explain why they feel they should be exempted from undertaking their national service when other trained professionals undertake their mandatory national service.
“I heard the teacher trainees say that ‘yes, we are going to do induction and probation’ but ‘we don’t want to do national service’, really? When we say your induction and probation period is the same as your national service period, why don’t you want to do it? Nurses do it, doctors do it, lawyers do it.
“Everybody who has gone through the tertiary system does national services. So everybody is going to do it. It is a fight I’ll love because you have to tell me why you are better than somebody else. If you don’t do your national service we don’t get to employ you. We are going to do it,” he said.
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By: Edwin Kwakofi |citinewsroom.com | Ghana | edwinkwakofi@gmail.com |
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