Lower Manya Krobo teachers discuss welfare
The second delegates conference of the Lower Manya Krobo Municipal Teachers’ Welfare Fund has taken place at Akuse in the Eastern Region with a call on teachers to come together and establish viable welfare systems to cater for their needs.
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The Municipal Director of Education of Lower Manya Krobo, Mrs Margaret Aku Vormawor, who made the call, said when teachers came together to pool resources for welfare and credit union schemes, it would prevent them from subjecting themselves to ‘shylock loan operators’ who usually cheated them when they needed financial assistance.
Financial difficulties
Mrs Vormawor stated that some teachers who were in financial difficulties took loans from money lenders with very high interest rates which created problems for them and subsequently affected their performance in the classroom.
“We are people in need and we must seriously come together and establish a very viable teachers’ welfare system or credit union in order to cater for our needs without subjecting ourselves to “shylock” loan operators who usually cheat us.
“As teachers, we need the welfare system to save ourselves and the profession because when we are in difficulty and we go to the money lenders, we become worse off because of the high interest rates they charge us,” she said.
Mrs Vormawor cited good health, housing, education, retirement, as the most identifiable benefits teachers would gain from credit union and the welfare schemes.
Co-curricular activities
She touched on efforts to boost Co-curricular activities in schools and disclosed that as from the next academic year, a programme to teach students how to play talking drums in all the schools to help the students learn drum language in the schools would be introduced.
The old executive members of the Lower Manya Krobo Teachers’ Welfare Fund were all retained for another two-year term.
Mrs Vormawor stressed the need for the executive to continue to be reliable, trust- worthy, truthful, accountable, and committed to the task assigned them.
Labour front
For his part, the Greater Accra Deputy Regional Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), Mr Felix Owusu-Ansah, who was also the former Municipal GNAT secretary for Manya Krobo, educated the delegates on the usefulness of labour unions and appealed to the teachers to support the unions to fight for the tier-two of the pension scheme.