The Minister of Education, Dr. Mathew Opoku Prempeh says the Predident Nana Akufo-Addo led NPP government has an enviable record of caring for teachers than the main opposition National Democratic Congress.
At the Volta Regional NPP TEACHERS NETWORK conference in Ho on Sunday 11th October 2020, Dr. Mathew Opoku Prempeh, said the opposition NDC while in power from 2009-2016 rolled out worst educational policies in the history of Ghana.
According to the minister of education both professor Mills and the John Dramani Mahama governments at the time treated teachers with the disrespect that affected the educational sector very negatively.
Addressing the conference, Dr. Prempeh noted that “In three and half years, what your government has done is unparalleled. Today, I won’t talk about what we have done in education, I’ll talk about what we have done with teaching and teachers. And I would like those who claim they are Professors and held the Ministry for four years before I got there, to sit by me so we could count our achievements one by one,”
He added that “ they never managed leadership, they exercised power but never were leaders,” stressing that the cancellation of the Teacher Training Allowance by the erstwhile John Mahama was the last straw drawn from the camel’s back.
“You were paid as a pupil-teacher the day you started training, you got paid till you finish -whether you pass your final exams or not. A certain government came and said let’s separate the colleges of education from the Ghana Education Service, so it led to the truncation of the pupil-teacher pay. That government in another time decided to stop the teacher training allowance, with the excuse that you’re a tertiary institution so qualify for a student loan. That was not the problem because it was the truth but the teacher trainee who finished the college of education, who got posted, was not put on the payroll of the Ghana Education Service till you did your probation and your induction and your kominini and you got your completion before the district supervisor or somebody came to certify that you’re. ”
He further noted “So I know of teachers who taught for 20 years who never got onto the payroll because they never completed their exams in the training college. So the pupil-teacher pay continuing when they finish school was to enable the teacher have something to chew upon before he was fully absorbed into the teaching profession, when they cancelled it and stopped the teacher training allowance, they never thought about what was happening to the teacher, who went to Pusiga, Aflao, Wenchi or Tumu who knew nobody in that community, where that teacher was going to live, how that teacher was going to sustain himself till that teacher’s salary came; that is another form of disrespect to the teacher,”.
The Minister in his closing remarks appealed to all the teachers to remember what Nana Akuffo Addo has done for them and not make a mistake by voting John Dramani Mahama on the 7th of December 2020 because that would spell another doom for them and other Ghanaians.
Filed By : Agaatorne Douglas Asaah / awakenewsroom.com