The Technical University Teachers’ Association of Ghana (TUTAG) has called off a strike it declared barely six hours after the declaration.
The association embarked on a sit-down strike two months ago in protest of the non-payment of allowances due to members following the conversion of polytechnics to technical universities.
Following this action, the National Labour Commission directed the Finance Ministry and the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission to pay all allowances due to the lecturers, following which they called off their strike.
However, a letter dated today, Friday addressed to the NLC noted that the directive has been disregarded, hence the resumption of the strike.
But TUTAG has since backtracked on that decision.
National President of TUTAG, Dr. Solomon Keelson explains why:
“We have not issued the statement to begin the strike so that we give them up until the end of the month. So by Tuesday, December 31, the month will have ended so that we can be sure that the engagement we had with the National Labour Commission can be acted upon.”
Resumption of strike
TUTAG on Friday declared an immediate resumption of its suspended strike.
In a letter sighted by Citi News, leadership of TUTAG described the non-payment of their December public universities allowances as a refusal by the government to comply with the ruling by the National Labor Commission.
Speaking to the Greater Accra President of TUTAG, Dr. Ibrahim Zubairu said until the Association gets the assurance of paying their allowances; they will not rescind their decision.
“The NLC ruling on 28th of October held that the government should pay us all the allowances of our salaries for December…One paid in January, the other one paid in February and we agreed on that but when our salaries came, it came with the old good allowances so members were not happy that they had been shortchanged.”
The three-week continuous industrial action by TUTAG and the recent indefinite strike also declared by the administrators had dire consequences on technical education in the country.
The strike by the two unions was over the government’s failure to migrate them onto the public universities’ salary structure.
Students in some of the technical universities also held various protests to impress upon the government to meet their demands and ensure that they return to class to enable academic work resume.
