GRASAG draws demo line over UTAG strike

UTAG demands improved conditions of service

Professor Gyampo says lecturers want their due not meetings

Public universities at risk of shutdown as UTAG strike enters week 3

The Graduate Students Association of Ghana (GRASAG) will consider hitting the streets - as a last resort - to press their demand for government to intervene in the current University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) strike.

UTAG began a nationwide strike action on January 10, 2022 over what they describe as the deteriorating nature of their conditions of service.

Amongst other things, they want their 2013 Interim Market Premium (IMP) of 114% of Basic Salary restored.

Whiles the National Labour Commission has declared their strike illegal and directed them to call it off, UTAG has been adamant in complying insisting that they will not call off their strike action until their demands are met.

With students bearing the brunt, GRASAG says it is lacing its boots to hit the streets.

“It’s high time we move from the “tsooboi” mentality and start to negotiate with management. That is why we are first of all, writing to the government to listen to the plea of the lecturers and our plea as well. But if this doesn’t happen…what do you think the students will do…they cannot go and beat government…the only thing they will do is at the end of the day, we will make the government unpopular which we don’t want to do. So government must help us. We will keep pushing for the government to listen to us,” the GRASAG President Heartwill Selasi Tamekloe said in an interview on Citi News on Wednesday January 26, 2022.

Asked if they will hit the street should their plea fall on deaf ears, she said “if the need demands”.

Meanwhile public universities are on the verge of a shutdown as the UTAG strike enters week three.

By statutes, public universities must be closed down after 21 days of non-academic work.