The Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) says it has completed the migration of senior and junior staff of the technical universities from the polytechnic single spine grade structure to the appropriate grade structure of senior and junior staff of public universities.
The Commission says the migration has been approved for implementation accordingly following a letter dated 8th January 2020, signed by the Commission’s Executive Secretary, Dr. Edward Kwapong, and addressed to the Finance Minister.
The letter said the Commission noted that responsibility and entertainment allowance were illegally paid to non-office holding senior and junior staff in the past without being consolidated.
This, it said is illegal and has been stopped.
In the same manner, it noted that cashier allowance and duty allowance have also been dropped after being consolidated under the single spine structure, while drivers’ allowance paid previously to drivers of rectors has also been scrapped.
Dr. Edward Kwapong told Citi News that differences in salaries between what the polytechnic staff earned in the past and what they are to earn as university staff have now been settled.
“Fair Wages in collaboration with NCTE and the Controller have worked on the migration from the polytechnic structure unto the university structure and because of that, certain positions that existed in the polytechnics can no longer be found on the public universities pay structure,” he said.
“The basic principle is that, there are positions that don’t exist anymore and we will see where we will place them and if there are new positions that we need to fill, we will do that. Where there is a difference between what you were earning as a polytechnic lecturer and now a public university lecturer, we will make sure that a conversion difference and a top-up will be made so you don’t lose out,” he added.
About TUTAG strike
The Technical University Teachers Association of Ghana (TUTAG) declared an indefinite strike on January 6, 2020, in protest of the non-payment of allowances due its members following the conversion of polytechnics to technical universities.
The association was upset that the government did not comply with an earlier ruling by the NLC to ensure that members of the association started receiving allowances due them from December 2019, January 2020 and February 2020.
The government has since been giving assurances that it will comply with the ruling and give qualified TUTAG and other former polytechnic staff what is due them.
The National Labour Commission after a meeting with the various stakeholders directed TUTAG to call off its strike. It also directed government to ensure that concerns TUTAG raised are addressed by January 29, 2020.
Although TUTAG has assured that it will adhere to the NLC’s ruling, it is however yet to call off the strike.
