Regional News of Monday, 16 August 2021
Source: www.ghanaweb.live
2021-08-16GNAT threatens withdrawal of services over continuous attacks on teachers
Municipal GNAT chairman for Manya Krobo, Evans Tetteh Tamatey
Correspondence from Eastern Region
Teachers from Manya Krobo in the Eastern Region have issued an ultimatum to authorities to either address the continuous attacks on teachers or they would embark on a strike.
The move, according to the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), is in solidarity with victims of several attacks on teachers in the Manya Krobo area
Read full articleand the country, with recent incidents being reported in two schools in the former.
Municipal GNAT chairman for Manya Krobo, Evans Tetteh Tamatey who issued the warning in an interview with GhanaWeb during a visit to the Kodjonya Millennium Presbyterian Junior High School to solidarize with the teachers in the wake of a recent attack on a teacher, decried the increasing spate of attacks on teachers and urged authorities to ensure a prevailing peaceful environment for teachers by bringing suspects who engage in such acts to book.
His rants come in the wake of two recent attacks on teachers in Manya Krobo where a teacher of the Kodjonya Millennium School was threatened with a machete by a young man.
In the other incident, a visual arts student of the Akro Senior High Technical School allegedly beat up a teacher and also stabbed one of the school’s security officers in the chest with a broken bottle.
According to Mr. Tamatey, the Association would have no option but to lay down its tools should such incidents continue as the time has come for teachers to speak out against unprovoked attacks on them.
“This would be the last one we are going to take, should anything of that [nature] happen again, we would have no option but to withdraw our services until we feel that the school environment is safe for us to come and do our work peacefully,” an agitated GNAT chairman said.
The recent attacks on teachers in the two schools, he said were not the first in the schools in question as similar attacks were recorded in the past.
“Recently, this same Kodjonya experienced such thing and then just last month, at the Akro senior high school, we had [a situation] where students attacked teachers and a security man, wounding them with broken bottles and all those things,” he recounted.
To curb future incidents of this nature, the municipal GNAT chairman said engagements were held with the Municipal Security Committee (MUSEC) and other stakeholders.
“We have tried engaging the stakeholders, telling them what they need to do to address these issues,” said Mr. Tamatey. “We met the stakeholders, the MCE who is the MUSEC chairman, director of education, we met other PTAs leaders and had words with them and requested that they put security things in place to assure we the teachers that we are safe and everything is good for us.”
The chairman who said the situation, instead of improving was becoming alarming, intimated that the situation was causing anxiety among teachers.
He said, “In as much as the whole country is suffering from that, ours in Manya Krobo is becoming alarming and the problem is that it is putting all the teachers to fear. Nobody is at peace now because you don’t know who is going to be the next victim.”
Stressing on the labour laws to buttress his point, the GNAT chairman said the laws permit workers whose working conditions are unfavourable to withdraw their services.
The GNAT chairman who blamed the situation on “child rights” said restrictions on disciplinary measures against students and pupils was partly to blame for the impunity.
“It appears that the child rights has made teachers to coil because if mistakenly you want to do any punishment, they say corporal punishment, trouble for you,” he said.
To address the impunity, Mr. Tamatey is demanding “stiffer punishment for culprits to serve as a deterrent to others,” adding that lenient punishments emboldens would-be offenders.
He also called for compensation for affected teachers and an NCCE-driven public education to sensitize the public against such actions.
The Kodjonya Millennium JHS remains closed and he disclosed that parents of the students will be asked to sign a special bond that will grant the school the power to expel any student who indulges in such acts.
He again called on teachers to continue to exhibit professionalism in their line of duty.
According to him, GNAT is pushing through to ensure that the Teachers’ Compensation Act to compensate teachers who fall victim is passed.
“We are also trying to push for the Compensation Act so that teachers who suffer such attacks will be compensated as is being done in other organisations in Ghana here,” he noted.
