Final year teacher trainees send warning to gov’t

Final year training teachers in the western and central sector (WEC Sector) have reminded government to put in place measures to ensure that they do not suffer same fate as field teachers over salaries.

To this end, they are calling on government to immediately get them registered at the Controller and Accountant General’s Department in order to receive their salaries immediately after posting.

The trainees - billed to complete school at the end of July - made these sentiments known in a statement released on Friday, May 20.

“We are therefore by this release petitioning the government to put in place visible measures to register level 300 teacher trainees at the Controller and Accountant General's department immediately, so we can receive our salaries as early as possible when we are posted,” the statement said.

Find the statement below:

TTAG - WEC SECTOR challenges government to explicitly spell out the fate of teacher trainees before June 1st June 2016.

The leadership of the Teacher Trainees' Association of Ghana - Western and Central Sector is calling on the government of Ghana to come out explicitly and tell teacher trainees and the Ghanaian populace the measures being put in place to ensure that newly trained teachers who will be posted in August this year are paid their salaries immediately after their posting, since they are not taking any allowance.

It would be recalled that, the teacher trainees allowance has been cancelled since the beginning of the 2013/2014 academic year and any attempt made by the trainees to ensure the reverse of this unpopular policy has proved futile. Students in the public colleges of education have gone through hell in pursuing their dream of becoming teachers to train the future leaders of our dear country, Ghana. With barely two months to complete the programme, what is the fate of the final year teacher trainee? Their out program which received no support from the government has already burdened the final year teacher trainees with heavy costs of rent, utility bills, teaching and learning materials, just to mention but a few of them.

Even though the leadership made several attempts to catch the eye of the government and other stakeholders, all their efforts remained a fiasco. Teacher trainees can confidently say that, government has not made any advancement to ensure that newly trained teachers for the 2016/2017 academic year are captured on government payroll immediately after their posting. Life was and has always been very tough for teacher trainees during their out-programme even as some live in groups of three or four and share the responsibility of rent charges, utility bills, and even cook together. The final year teacher trainee is therefore left with no option than to also worry about how tougher life is going to be after his or her posting.

Now the big and most worrisome question staring at the faces of final year teacher trainees is: how and where they are going to get money to cater for their rent, the transportation of their belongings and their livelihood after they've been posted to their new stations? Which landlord will accept that we stay in his or her house till the time we start receiving our salaries? We can't simply go through this embarrassment. Even our predecessors who were still taking the trainees' allowance after their posting were complaining of economic hardship, how much more we non-allowance beneficiaries? All that we hear is, "it's in the pipeline". Till when is it getting out of the pipeline? Is that pipeline really not chocked?

We are therefore by this release petitioning the government to put in place visible measures to register level 300 teacher trainees at the Controller and Accountant General's department immediately, so we can receive our salaries as early as possible when we are posted.

We also wish to remind the government that we have a semester's feeding grant in arrears and as stated earlier, we will complete our programme in two months’ time (In the month of July). We therefore plead with the government to release the grant by the end of June so that we can access it before the end of our programme in the colleges of education.

Finally, there is this rumor that newly trained teachers will do one year internship before being absorbed into mainstream teaching. If it is true, then we want to tell government and the whole Ghana that we didn't commit any crime to suffer unfortunate hardship so therefore we can't simply take this. What offence have we committed?

Again, we wish to reiterate that the feeding of teacher trainees in the colleges of education remains the sole responsibility of the government, and that, our earlier resolution that no trainee should pay the feeding fee, still holds and we cannot undergo any internship.

In conclusion, all that we seek for is a prompt payment of the salaries and feeding grant of newly trained teachers and teacher trainees respectively.

We would also like to state categorically and emphatically that TTAG is a non-partisan organization and must be treated as such.

TTAG - We Mean Well!!