TUTAG Announces Indefinite Strike Again Over Unpaid Allowances

The Technical University Teachers Association of Ghana (TUTAG) has announced an indefinite strike effective Monday to protest the non-payment of allowances due its members following the conversion of polytechnics to technical universities.

According to the Association, government has “refused to fully comply” with the ruling by the National Labour Commission (NLC) to ensure that its members start receiving their allowances from December 2019, January 2020 and February 2020.

Addressing the media, National President of TUTAG, Dr Solomon Keelson, said, “salaries of December 2019 were paid without the said allowances with no official communication to that effect.”

“Government is doing everything to create a second-tier public university even though the NTC [National Tertiary Council] professes parity of prestige,” he said.

He added that TUTAG shall only call off the strike “upon the fulfilment of the National Labour Commission ruling on the 28th of October 2019.”

The strike will disrupt teaching, invigilation and the marking of scripts in technical universities.

Members of TUTAG on October 7, 2019, embarked on a sit-down strike after emoluments due them were not released despite a directive from the Ministry of Finance to the Controller and Accountant General’s Department.

Technical Universities Administrators Association of Ghana (TUSAAG) subsequently joined the industrial action, demanding full benefits of migration onto the public universities’ salary structure.

The three-week continuous strike by TUTAG and the administrators brought technical education across the country to a standstill.

This caused students in some of the technical universities to protests in order to propel the government to meet their teachers’ demands and ensure that they return to class to enable academic work to resume.

On October 28, 2019, the NCL ordered TUTAG to call off the strike after successful meeting TUTAG and other stakeholders in the employment industry.

However on December 27, 2019, TUTAG declared a strike after initially calling off the strike started in October but this industrial action lasted for only six hours.