Government killing Technical Universities – TUTAG

The Technical Universities Teachers Association of Ghana, TUTAG, has issued an ultimatum to government to constitute the Governing Councils for the various Technical universities or risk triggering serious labour unrest in that sector.

Addressing the media Friday in Koforidua, the General Secretary of TUTAG, David Worwui-Brown said “if the Councils are not duly inaugurated by August 25, 2017 we shall advice ourselves. We have a lot of options, we have the option to go on a sit down strike, we can go on full strike, we have option not to teach, we have option not to mark scripts and we have option not to participate in any activity of the institution.”

According to the Association, Councils of other tertiary institutions have been inaugurated but, no council of any of the Technical Universities has been constituted grounding major decisions and activities of the Technical Universities.

TUTAG enumerated that the situation has led to inability of the Technical Universities to legitimately admit fresh students, graduate students determine fees for 2017/2018 academic year, recruit key staff and implement the provision of Technical Universities Act, 2016( Act 922) among other challenges crippling Technical University education.

According to TUTAG, despite assurances by the Minister of Education, Mathew Opoku Prempeh during a meeting with the executives on April 13, 2017 that the councils will be inaugurated before the end of June, 2017, the situation remains unchanged deepening woes and anxiety among technical Universities.
The Association therefore believes that the tactics is a deliberate ploy by the current government to kill the Technical University initiative by the previous government.

“Since the conversion of Polytechnics to Technical Universities, the current government before assuming office had been castigating the policy and after winning power is continuing in the grand agenda to kill the initiative of the previous government.”