Ongoing UTAG Strike : Schools to be shutdown as UTAG Insists on Gov’t Meeting Their Demands First ;University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) members on strike say they will not return to the lecture halls until the government satisfies their requests for better working conditions.
On the other hand, the government is asking UTAG to be flexible with their requests and to return to class while they negotiate. The UTAG’s secretary stated in an interview monitored by Knustnoticeboard that, UTAG will not call off the strike unless their demands are met. If this trend continues, public universities will be forced to shoutdown on economic grounds while the government works out a solution with UTAG.
Since January 10, 2022, UTAG has been on strike in protest of their employer’s failure to assess their working conditions since 2017.
Students, both returning and new, continue to face the brunt of the enraged instructors, who have been in and out of meetings with the government in an attempt to break the impasse.
Dr. Asare Asante-Annor, UTAG’s national secretary, told Citi News that their legal team will return to court on Tuesday.
There was the issue that because of the worsening economic conditions, the government should give us an interim market premium of 114% of our current basic so that when the substantive issue is done, then our members will be put back so that they are not worse off. And we have had a couple of meetings, but we have still not been able to reach any form of agreement. More specifically we don’t have any offer from the government to our members
In the communiqué, we issued on the 10th of January, we stated clearly that the employer or the government should expedite action with regard to our demands so that the academic calendar is not affected, but unfortunately that has not happened and so long as our demands are not satisfied, we will continue with the strike
UTAG has been on strike since January 10 in an attempt to persuade the government to reinstate the 2012 service conditions. A lecturer’s Basic plus Market Premium was set at $2,084.42 in the 2012 conditions of service.
The current arrangement, according to UTAG, has decreased the basic premiums of its members to $997.84.
UTAG was taken to court by the National Labour Commission, but the two were advised to return to the negotiating table.
The Commission filed a lawsuit to enforce its ruling, which was ignored by public university lecturers across the country. The Commission had already ordered UTAG to end its strike, but this order was not followed.
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