Unemployed graduate teachers protest
SOME unemployed graduate teachers yesterday hit the streets of Accra to protest against the government’s failure to provide them with jobs.
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Members of the group who were dressed in red and black clothing, wielded various placards with inscriptions lamenting their situation and demanding for jobs.
The protesters, known as the ‘Assembly of University Trained Teachers of Ghana,’ comprised graduates from the Cape Coast University (UCC), the University of Development Studies (UDS) and the University of Education, Winneba.
Their action comes in the wake of series of protests by unemployed trained nurses who are also demanding immediate postings.
Demonstration
The demonstration started at around 8:00am from the Kwame Nkrumah Circle through the Kwame Nkrumah Avenue road to the Accra Polytechnic and ended at the Accra Hearts of Oak Park.
A petition was subsequently submitted to the Deputy Minister of Education, Barbara Ayisi Acher, after the march.
According to the protesters, several petitions sent to the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service (GES) to employ them had not yielded any results.
The group asserted that the government had refused to recruit them since their graduation from school in 2011.
They have, therefore, given a two-week ultimatum to the government to engaged them before the next academic year which begins in September this year or they will picket at the Education Ministry.
For her part, the Deputy Education Minister urged the graduates to be patient with the government while it worked to get them recruited.
Claims
Speaking to the Daily Graphic in an interview, the Deputy National Secretary of the association, Mr Samuel Yeboah Asare, said efforts by the leadership of the group to meet the sector minister had not yielded results.
He said initially, when the group started following up on their recruitment last year, they were told there was an embargo on teacher recruitment.Nonetheless, before the elections, he said a former Deputy Minister of Education, Mr Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, met with the leadership who told them that the Ministry of Education had received clearance for recruitment and so they were going to employ about 22,000 teachers.
The secretary, however, said as a result of the change in government this year, that promise had not been realised.
Follow-ups
Mr Asare further claimed that in April 2017, the group managed to meet with the current Minister of Education, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, who also directed them to the Minister of State in charge of Tertiary Education, Professor Kwesi Yankah.
According to him, even though they met with Prof. Yankah in May 2017, their aspirations were not met and that subsequent attempts to get the deputy minister on phone were not successful.
“The painful part is the fact that our colleagues from the Colleges of Education are being recruited every now and then, yet the government has turned a blind eye on us. The situation has forced some of my colleagues to become taxi drivers while others depend on their families for survival,” he said.
Loan repayment
One of the graduates, Mr Isaac Appiah Bampoe, told the Daily Graphic that he took a student loan to study in the university and since he had completed he was expected to pay back.
“I took GH¢2,000 of student loan and now I am supposed to pay about GH¢6,500 because the interest on the loan keeps compounding. We are pleading with the government to employ us to work,” he said.
