NYEP Teaching Assistants in Bawku demand to be paid

Bawku, May 19, GNA - The Bawku National Youth Employment Teaching Assistants have called on the Municipal Assembly to speed up the process of paying them their salaries. The teaching assistants, numbering about 289, made the call when they presented a petition to Municipal NYEP Coordinator complaining that they had worked for 10 months instead of nine months. The teaching assistant union chairman, Mr Samuel Windella, told the Ghana News Agency on Thursday that it had been confirmed that all districts had received their salaries but they had not and that a close source told their union that their salaries had been used to pay contractors. Mr Windella said if their salaries were not paid in time they were going to vacate post because it was those monies that they used in running their daily activities such as feeding, clothing and transporting themselves to their various teaching posts. Mr Windella appealed to the Ghana Education Service to intervene because the action they planned to take was going to affect teaching in the area. The Municipal NYEP Coordinator, Mr Philip Ayamba, refuted the allegation because it was a baseless one. He said that the delay was as a result of miscommunication and that there was no way the assembly could have used money meant for NYEP to pay contractors. Mr Ayamba explained that a pay voucher was prepared and sent to the national NYEP office in Accra but it was detected that majority of the teaching assistants did not provide the correct account numbers and that they had sent the pay voucher back for a new one to be prepared before the national office could effect payment. He appealed to the teaching assistant to go on with their work while efforts were being made to get them their salaries.