CKT-UTAS students appeal to government to settle grievances of staff

The Students Representative Council (SRC) of the Clement Kubindiwo Tedam-University of Technology and Applied Sciences (CKT-UTAS), Navrongo, is appealing to government to settle staff grievances of the University to enable academic activities to continue.

They said the ongoing internal strike action by the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG), the Ghana Association of University Administrators (GAUA), the Teachers Educational Workers Union and the Senior Staff Association-Universities of Ghana (SSA-UoG) affected their academic activities.

According to the striking Unions, the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) migrated staff of the University onto a payroll that recognised them as new staff, and they would lose their basic salaries and allowances which ranged from five per cent to 59 per cent.

“We, the SRC admit the fact that the University is new, but the staff are not. They have been working for years under the UDS payment system and they should not be treated as such by the GTEC.”

This was contained in a statement signed by Mr Ebenezer Opoku-Mensah, the SRC President of the CKT-UTAS and copied to the Ghana News Agency in Bolgatanga.

The statement expressed concern about the impact of the strike action, which started on August 2, 202, by the Unions, on the academic activities in the University, “All academic related activities in the University have halted.”

The statement noted that the COVID-19 pandemic had distracted the academic calendar and the strike had made it worse with its financial implication on both parents and students.

It added that the situation posed psychological trauma to students and appealed for immediate government intervention to solve the grievances of staff of the University.

“We believe CKT-UTAS staff deserves better and the innocent students should not be made to suffer from misunderstanding between Workers Unions of CKT-UTAS and the government,” The SRC said.