MP Blasts Osafo-Maafo Over NAGRAT Strike

As the rumpus over the ongoing strike action by the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), which has virtually crippled academic activities in almost all Senior Secondary Schools rages on, a Member of Parliament (MP) and veteran educationist has gone full blast on the Minister of Education and Sports, blaming him for taking a confrontational stance, which has rather deepened the crisis.

In an interview with The Independent on the way forward for the resolution to what has become known as educational crisis, Mr Alex Tettey-Enyo, MP for Ada and the former Acting Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES) did not only describe the Minister's action as unfortunate and uncalled for, but said the action was highly unprofessional.

He said such confrontational stance has the tendency to hurt negotiations and drive factions into taking entrenched positions to the detriment of academic work which have been stalled for the past month. The former Director-General who is also the Ranking Member on Education, said the threat to hold back salaries of the striking NAGRAT members and subsequent recruitment of retried teachers and Reverend Ministers in their place was indeed a clear case of misjudgment and indiscretion on the part of the Minister and the GES.

"The threats were in bad taste, they did not help matters but rather aggravated the crisis," the veteran educationist said.

Mr Tettey-Enyo, who until his appointment as acting Director-General was the Director in charge of Secondary Education, said Mr Osafo Maafo and the GES over relied on Act 506 of the Service, which was enacted in 1995 to deny NAGRAT of fair hearing. The Oda MP stated that under the Act the GES Council was under obligation to negotiate only with the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) and the Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU).

This is wrong, he said, and explained that at the time of drafting the Act, nobody envisaged that there could be a splinter group like NAGRAT so the law did not make provision fro that, adding that it does not mean that the Ministry and the GES should ignore NAGRAT in the way they did, which is what has escalated the crisis.

The Ranking Member said the Minister and the GES rather than concentrating on legalities should have attempted to address the concerns they raised, which needed immediate attention as a way on persuading the striking teachers to return to the classrooms.