UTAG: Maintenance of book and research allowance as condition to end strike

• Posted on September 2, 2014September 2, 2014
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

University teachers will hold a crunch meeting with government today to insist that the book and research allowance be maintained as a condition to end a protracted strike lasting over a month.

“We expect that the [book and research allowance] should not be scrapped and should co-exist with the national research fund”, General Secretary for University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) Samuel Atintonoo told Joy News.

Their position comes despite concession by government to pay the controversial allowance for 2013/14 that became the teacher’s rallying point for the strike.

Government had earlier maintained that it did not owe the teachers and also announced its plan to convert the book and research allowance into a research fund to be disbursed when an interested lecturer wants support for research.

These two government position forced polytechnic and university lecturers to embark on strike.

In the case of POTAG the strike has travelled over three months and ended after government agreed to pay the allowance last week.

UTAG is still on strike.

It appears the victory will only be complete after UTAG manages to get government to also rescind its decision on scrapping the allowance all together.

The UTAG General Secretary expressed the association’s satisfaction after a previous meeting to discuss the issue.

“They were beginning to understand things. We were quite happy with the last time we met them and we hope that [today] it goes that way. We should be getting results in the way we want”.

-joynews