Asunafo District teachers threaten to go on strike

Goaso (B/A), Nov 26, GNA - Seventy-eight basic school trained teachers in the Asunafo District have threatened to abandon their classrooms if they are not placed on their right salary scale by the end of the month.

The aggrieved teachers, who completed their training in 2001, are demanding a change from their current ''level 10 step two'' to ''level 10 step three.''

They told the Ghana News Agency that their non-placement on the right scale had a lot of negative implications on their future prospects.

Their spokesman, Maxwell Bediako, said some of his colleagues had been receiving teacher trainee allowance since September 2001 and all attempts to get the anomaly rectified had proved futile.

''We were made to fill the relevant forms including the IPPD some six months ago but have not received any positive response.''

The teachers blamed the Asunafo District Director of Education, Mr Baryeh Amaniampong, for their plight and condemned his "total callousness and indifference" to their demand.

They accused him of being the cause of the poor academic results of the district in the BECE for the past three years, saying his attitude towards teachers' problems would continue to affect the results.

In reaction, Mr Amaniampong and his accountant said the plight of the teachers was a top priority of the directorate and as at the time that the teachers issued their threat someone from the directorate was on his way to Accra for their problem to be addressed.

Mr George Yaw Boakye, the DCE, appealed to the teachers to rescind their decision to lay down their chalk and give his office time to liase with the district directorate to resolve the problem.

''Their absence from the classroom will aggravate the poor academic standard of the district that we have been fighting relentlessly to improve.''

The DCE appealed to workers in the district to use all available communication channels for a redress of their problems and expressed the hope that the teachers would rescind their decision "in the interest of peace, the schoolchildren and patriotism".