By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

The decision by Ghana’s Ministry of Education to assist actively engaged teachers, as well as other educational-sector workers, in owning their own homes is, without a doubt, a laudable idea and one that has been almost too long in coming (See “Housing Scheme for Teachers Sustainable – Tettey-Enyo” MyJoyOnline.com 6/13/09). Still, even as one thoughtful commentator in the MyJoyOnline.com chat-room intimated, unless certain crucial details of the scheme are accorded the necessary attention that they deserve, the entire project is likely to remain on the drawing board for a long time to come.

The first problem that ought to be promptly recognized here is the routinely traditional manner in which public-school teachers are transferred throughout the country. What this implies is the immediate need for an affordable, employee-oriented, or friendly, housing scheme to be first set up for these public-school teachers. In other words, there ought to be readily available accommodation facilities that are owned and/or operated by the Ghana Education Service (GES) wherever teachers are transferred.

Traditionally, the practice has been for transferred teachers to spend considerable temporal spells hunting for living quarters ahead of their transfer schedules. This has generally not been very easy in the past, except in the case of head-teachers.

What it also means for the GES to either own and/or operate accommodation facilities for teachers and other educational-sector workers, is the critical question of affordability. In sum, vis-à-vis the barely livable wages and salaries paid many a Ghanaian elementary and high school teacher, it is next to a nigh-impossibility for the educators with whom we are concerned in this conversation to systematically deduct regular down payments, or mortgage payments, from their meager salaries for homes which they have yet to own, while at the same time making on-schedule, full-rental payments on existing accommodation facilities which they do not own but must reside in while they attend to their daily pedagogical activities.

In other words, under current circumstances, the salary structure of most full-time teachers makes it simply out-of-the-ordinary for teachers to meet two simultaneous housing payments. To ease up the preceding dilemma, therefore, the Ghana Education Service, if it has not already done so, ought to promptly review its teacher-transfer policy. Or, perhaps even more constructively, under its newly-hatched housing scheme, the GES could also consider a process whereby teachers are moved into already finished housing facilities in order to promptly and effectively eliminate the two simultaneous-rental-payment dilemma.

The foregoing would also mean that teachers are moved around, or transferred, less frequently than before; and even where such transfers become necessary, the proximity is such that most of these teachers would be readily able to commute daily from their residential abodes to their new working locales at the minimum of cost and temporal consumption.

Also, in view of the chronically acute shortage of professionally trained teachers in rural communities, it would probably be more meaningful to site such housing facilities, or schemes, initially in the rural communities in order to make rural posting of teachers more attractive. In sum, siting the first of such pilot housing scheme at Afienya, in the Greater-Accra Region, may not necessarily be the most expedient thing to do; for the latter essentially retreads the old, effete urban-oriented and neocolonialist policy pattern.

It also logically follows from the foregoing observation that teachers who sacrificially opt to serve in rural communities, irrespective of whether they hail from such communities, ought to have their stipulated mortgage payments drastically reduced, perhaps even halved. For it goes without saying that the future development of our country largely depends on the extent to which the government takes the empowerment of our rural populations seriously.

Furthermore, urban-born teachers who sacrificially opt to serve in our rural townships and villages, but decide to site their homes in their places of birth, could also have their mortgage payments drastically reduced or heavily subsidized by the government.

Ultimately if the scheme becomes successful, the sub-field of elementary-school teaching could well become one of the most attractive sectors of employment in our country, thus ensuring that a remarkable percentage of Ghana’s best and brightest would readily opt for permanent careers in the seminal area of elementary education. For when all is said and done, the most significant stage of formal education occurs at the elementary level, with all else constituting the proverbial icing on one’s cake.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of 20 books, including “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com. ###