The Technical University Senior Administrators Association of Ghana (TUSAAG) will meet the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) tomorrow to deliberate on the revised allowances payable to members.
This follows the decision of its members to advise themselves by the end of February if the allowances are not paid. The President of TUSAAG, Mr Edem K. Honu, said this in an interview with Daily Graphic.
TUSAAG had said in a statement that, “the uneasy calm on our campuses can no longer be contained if urgent steps are not taken to implement the revised allowances payable on payroll of public universities and to rectify all outstanding concerns of staff of the technical universities, especially senior members (non-teaching) before February 28, 2022”.
But Mr Honu noted that “after our release, the Chief Executive Officer of the FWSC, Mr Ben Arthur, got through to us in the night asking for a meeting tomorrow to deliberate on the issue. And so that is the new development.”
The statement signed by Mr Honu noted that the administrators were calling on the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) and the FWSC to put an immediate stop to the seemingly selective application of approved conditions of the public universities.
The current approach by GTEC and FWSC to implementing approved conditions of public universities, it said, is smacked of discrimination and ‘divide and rule’, which would continue to cause disharmony in the tertiary environment.
“We have observed that approved conditions of public universities are being implemented discriminatorily to the detriment of staff of the technical universities, especially senior members (non-teaching); and, therefore, demand that it should be brought to immediate end if the GTEC and FWSC yearn for harmony in the public universities,” it said.
The statement explained that since the conversion of the polytechnics into technical universities in August, 2016 following the passage of the Technical Universities Act, 2016 (Act 922) as amended, the Technical Universities (TUs) have not been given their due share of conditions applicable to public universities without staff agitating in the form of strike.
“Though unhealthy, the GTEC and FWSC made it look as if their actions were in favour of the TUs. The GTEC’s touted ‘anthem’ ‘parity of prestige’, has never been put into practice as far as the TUs are concerned,” it said.
It said again that the FWSC in a letter dated August 23, 2021, revised allowances payable on payroll of public universities for senior members of the public universities with effect from August, 2021.
“Though the revised allowances are applicable to staff of all the public universities in the country, they are being selectively implemented to the neglect of the TUs”, TUSSAG said.
“As if this was not enough, the GTEC in a divide and rule tactics, excluded senior members (non-teaching) of the TUs from payment of new rates of electricity, owner occupier and security allowances in December, 2021”, it said.
It said furthermore that the government and its team, including the GTEC and FWSC, failed to honour a meeting called by the NLC on December 8, 2021 to resolve those very issues raised by TUSAAG.
“These acts of inaction and omissions have given rise to a lot of tension on the campuses of the TUs which may ‘explode’ at any time soon”, it emphasised.
The statement supported the current action of the national leadership of the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG), adding that it was high time staff of the public universities were taken seriously and appropriately remunerated.
