UTAG takes steps to suspend strike

The University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) has taken steps to suspend its ongoing strike and return to the negotiation table.

This follows a meeting the leadership held with the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations and the National Labour Commission (NLC) on Wednesday.

The development was captured in a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the parties at the meeting.

The MoU, among other things, stated both parties have agreed to discontinue the legal processes concerning the strike.

They have also given themselves a one-month mandatory period to settle all outstanding issues, beginning Monday, August 23, 2021.

Within the period, the government and UTAG will also negotiate the research component of the Book and Research Allowance, market premium, and non-basic allowance.

The association and its members on Monday, August 2, 2021, declared a nationwide strike, demanding that the government restores the conditions of service agreed upon with the government in 2012.

The 2012 conditions of service pegged the basic plus market premium of a lecturer at $2,084.42 but UTAG has complained that the current arrangement has reduced its members’ basic premiums to $997.84.

But the NLC on Friday, August 5, 2021, secured an interlocutory injunction to compel UTAG to call off its strike and return to work immediately, which the association defied.

At the first court hearing on Monday, UTAG was slapped with a GHC3,000.00 fine over what the court describes as a waste of its time.

Read the full MoU below:

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ABOUT: Nana Kwesi Coomson

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An Entrepreneur, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Communications Executive and Philanthropist. Editor-in-Chief of www.233times.com. A Senior Journalist with Ghanaian Chronicle Newspaper. An alumnus of Adisadel College where he read General Arts. His first degree is in Bachelor of Arts - Political Science (major) and History (minor) from the University of Ghana. He holds MSc in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Energy with Public Relations (PR) from the Robert Gordon University in the United Kingdom. He is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow who studied at Clark Atlanta University in USA on the Business and Entrepreneurship track.

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