Teachers Need Attention, Mr President

There is no denying the fact that, there is a direct link between
Education and Income, Education and Opportunity.

There is no
success without education and without teachers playing very vital roles
in the classroom, formal education would not exist.

Medical
Practitioners, Engineers, Ministers, among others were once taught by
the poor teacher.

Government policies over the years; from 1957
to date; have not favored the teacher, whose monthly salary is nothing
to write home about, making it very difficult for the teacher to afford
three square meals a day.

This situation renders the Ghanaian
teacher incapable of sponsoring his children to have the best form of
formal education, let alone provide the needed resource materials to
enhance their studies at school.

Quite often, teachers depend on
credit facilities from the banks and other financial institutions to
enable them pay their children school fees or provide food and
clothing for their families.

Teachers who have been teaching for
about twenty to thirty years cannot boast of building their own houses
as a result of the meager salary they earn as well as the series of
deductions made from their gross income at source.

Some times,
teachers acquire their material needs on credit prior to the “pay day”
and are left with no or inadequate funds to spend after repaying the
debts they owe.

Teachers posted to work in deprived villages have
to trek for more than five kilometers to and from their schools each
day, without being given any incentive packages to boost their morale.

As
a result, the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) and
National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) have made several
appeals to successive governments regarding the increments of their
salary but little has since been done.

The frustrations that
teachers go through make some of them resort to excessive drinking of
alcoholic beverages in an attempt to forget about their problems
temporarily.

I believe that the only way to minimize the
frustrations, brain drain and truancy among teachers is for government
to satisfy dedicated teachers in the payment of salary and emoluments as
well as the provision of incentive packages.

Government should
also streamline the activities of the Ghana Education Service so as to
eliminate the widely rumored and unnecessary blocking of teachers'
salary and the termination of their appointments.

Since the roles
of the Ghanaian teacher cannot be over emphasized, the drastic fall in
the standard education in recent will get worse if government fails to
take a second look at the deplorable living conditions of teachers.

If
Ghanaian teachers migrate to China or South Africa in search of greener
pastures, then our government can also do something to retain them or
attract foreigners to come to Ghana to teach in our classrooms.

Teachers
who completed various training colleges after 1973 to date have been
compelled to join the SSNIT pension scheme and denied government pension
popularly called “Cap 30” while other workers enjoy the fruits of their
labor by receiving ex-Gratia.

I strongly believe that several
teachers who earlier vacated post due to the poor salary structure of
the noble profession shall troop back into the classroom if their needs
are met.

Teachers deserve better, and President John Evans Atta
Mills, who also served as teacher for many years, should fulfill his
promises to make the profession attractive to all Ghanaians.

God
bless Ghana.

BY VICTOR NYAKEY
victornyakey@yahoo.com
victornyakey@hotmail.com