The Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU) of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has set a deadline of August 7, 2023, for the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) to finalize negotiations regarding the payment of the Continuous Professional and Skills Development Allowance (CPSDA) to non-teaching staff of the Ghana Education Service (GES).
TEWU says the move is to ensure that the allowance is disbursed by November 2023.
The union has expressed dissatisfaction with the FWSC’s perceived delay in reaching an agreement, stretching the negotiations for over a year.
In an interview with Citi News, the General Secretary of TEWU, Mark Dankyira, said that the union may resort to taking action if their demands are not met before the stipulated deadline.
“The leadership of TEWU is disappointed at the way the FWSC is handling the negotiation on the payment of CPSDA, which our teaching counterparts in the GES were paid as far back as November 2020 after the Minister of Education announced some months earlier that the allowance had been approved by the government for both teaching and non-teaching staff of the service,” he said.
“If the commission fails to complete the negotiation by August 7, 2023, the leadership of the union should not be blamed for any action that may be taken by aggrieved members of TEWU,” Dankyira said.
TEWU also bemoaned the fact that the allowances of “teaching counterparts in the Ghana Education Service were paid as far back as November 2020 after the Minister of Education had announced some months earlier that the allowance had been approved by the government for both teaching and non-teaching staff of the Ghana Education Service.”