Office holding allowances in public universities: Administrators call for halt to implementation
The Ghana Association of University Administrators (GAUA) has called on the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) to halt the implementation of the Office Holding Allowances directive in the public universities forthwith.
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That, it said, was because the process was awash with discrimination, arbitrariness and unfair labour practices.
“The implementation of this obnoxious GTEC directive on officeholders has resulted in a number of GAUA Members losing their allowances while the complaints at the National Labour Commission (NLC) are still pending.
Directive
“The GTEC directive on officeholders should stop immediately until a proper implementation framework is agreed on by all stakeholders.
. Notice is hereby served that if the GTEC directive is not stopped by January 1, 2024, GAUA and its members will be compelled to lay down their tools,” it said in a statement signed by its President, Dr Beth Offei-Awuku.
At its National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of December 8, 2023, GAUA said it had noted with unwelcome concern the near “death” of academic freedom in the public universities of Ghana.
The meeting, representing all non-teaching senior members in the public universities in the country, focused on the recent apparent political interference with universities' governance as well as management issues of most public universities; the overregulation and virtual micro-management of the public universities by GTEC and its blatant disregard for legal documents like the universities' Acts of Parliament, the statutes and policies governing universities.
“Some government appointees to the university councils and politicians in the jurisdiction of some public universities have been noted to exert excessive political influence on the administrative structures of the public universities without recourse to the Acts, Statutes and Policies governing the establishment of the nation's public universities.
“Some recent directives of the GTEC seeking to adversely vary established conditions of service for non-teaching senior members makes it clear that university administration is under siege,” it said.
GAUA said those gravely worrying behaviours of the Regulator in dishonouring statutory provisions of legally binding documents was most distasteful and an affront to the academic freedom of those autonomous public institutions.
That trend, it said, was very wrong and needed urgent redress if the rule of law was anything to continue to live for.
“GAUA calls on the government and the relevant stakeholders to uphold the sanctity of academic freedom by enforcing the compliance with legal documents of the nation’s public universities,” it said.
