UTAG Strike: We want the cash, not meetings – Gyampo fires govt

UTAG declares strike effective January 10, 2022

NLC denounces strike action, says it is illegal

Students lament impact of strike action on academic work

Secretary to the Legon branch of the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UG-UTAG), Professor Ransford Gyampo, has criticized the government together with its agencies such as the National Labour Commission and the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission on their approach aimed at resolving the current strike action by national UTAG.

In a post on his social media handle, Professor Gyampo stated that government cannot continuously use meetings as smokescreens to prove that it was working tirelessly to get UTAG to call off their industrial action.

To this end, the senior political scientist at the University of Ghana has charged his colleagues to attend meetings that are productive and will bring the needed results as expressed in the demands made on the government.

“UTAG, we must only honour meetings that are productive. Others cannot use us to create the impression as if they are working by calling us to meetings. Meetings that cannot commit government to honor its obligations towards us in improving our Conditions of Service are inconsequential. We need cash, we don’t need meetings,” he wrote on his Facebook wall on Wednesday January 19, 2022.

The National Labour Commission (NLC) on Thursday January 13, met with Government officials and the National Executive Members of UTAG in a bid to resolve the impasse.

Briefing the media after the meeting President of UTAG, Dr Solomon Nunoo said NLC advised the feuding parties to engage more.

Post the meeting, the NLC on January 13 declared the strike action by UTAG as illegal and ordered them to return to the lecture halls.

However, UTAG is yet to comply with the directive with many students across various public institutions caught in a fix over the raging impasse.

A statement from the group dated January 19, indicates that “the members [of UTAG] have unanimously resolved to continue with the withdrawal of teaching and related services until further notice”.