Executives of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), has been given a 72-hour ultimatum to resign or face court action to remove them from office.
The Coalition of Concerned Teachers, a splitter group of the GNAT in the Western Region, which issued the threat, said the request came
amidst persistent failure of the leadership to adequately address the concerns of teachers.
Mr. Patrick Dzebu, Chairman of the Coalition, at a press conference in Takoradi, said the GNAT has grossly failed to meet the
demands of teachers in areas such as welfare, conditions of service, social status and financial accountability.
He said: “With reference to the above, we are calling on the leadership of GNAT to peacefully resign within 72 hours or face court
action”.
Mr. Dzebu alleged that the GNAT leadership were only using monies paid by teachers as dues to enrich themselves without the requisite social support for them (teachers).
He noted that “Our dues which stands at GHC11.50p each is even more than our mutual fund contributions, which is our retirement benefits. How can one pay such huge amount as dues without any proper accounting mechanism on how the monies are being utilized.
“GNAT accumulate more than 26 billion a year as contribution from teachers and can even lend to government”.
Mr. Dzebu said that the coalition was also disappointed that the welfare and social status scheme of teachers was not functioning,saying “When one teacher developed a-whole-in-heart problem, we the teachers had to be levied 3 Ghana Cedi each to cater for his medical expenses”.
He said migrating a Certificate ‘A’ teacher to the diploma status was also one of the issues raised by the Coalition, noting that teachers had to pay more than GHC6000 without any support system from the social status of Teachers module.
Mr. Dzebu said the coalition noted that teachers had been taken for granted for a long time, “The Time to Fight the Course of Teachers is now or never”.