Double Track System Will Grind To A Halt – TEWU Warns

The Teachers and Education Workers Union (TEWU) has warned that the double track system introduced at the Senior High Schools will suffer dire consequences if their membership embarks on its threatened strike action.

The union which has a majority of their membership working as cleaners, cooks, bursars, security personnel, janitors, librarians, laboratory assistants and other non-teaching staff of Ghana’s Education Service are contesting poor conditions of service.

They are also aggrieved with government’s decision to recruit more teachers for the double track system introduced in senior high schools without engaging extra non-teaching staff most of whom are overstretched.

TEWU is further discomforted by the delay in drafting a new condition of service to replace the expired conditions of service for its members.

Speaking to host of the Ultimate Breakfast Show, Julius Caesar Anadem, the KNUST Chairman of TEWU, Charles Attah, warned that the nation’s education system will not be spared the brunt of their industrial action slated for the end of May.

“In short children will be affected. In fact, the double track will come to a standstill, I am telling you. We will tell our matrons and our cooks not to go to work and we shall see who will go and cook for them,” he warned.
Mr. Attah pointed out that their membership will not continue to accept what he called discrimination that has been meted out against them for several years with repetitive excuses by government.

“Politicians froze employment then politicians brought double track and politicians think that they will employ teachers but will not employ non-teaching staff knowing very well that once the double track comes in the numbers will increase. Is this not discrimination,” he quizzed.

The Teachers and Education Workers Union has also begun a silent protest against discriminatory allocation of allowances to teachers and non-teaching staff, who have to take longer hours to support the Senior High School Double Track System occasioned by the government’s free SHS program.