UTAG has agreed to call off the strike ahead of negotiations with government
Members of the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) have resumed work, after 20 days of laying down their teaching tools, pending the negotiations with the government from Monday, August 23, 2021.
Members, who suspended their strike after meeting government representatives but had not returned to lecture halls, held meetings with their various campuses on Friday, August 20, 2021, to deliberate on whether to resume work prior to sitting at the negotiating table with the government from Monday.
Members of the Association from August 2, 2021, laid down their teaching tools and stayed off teaching, examinations and invigilation, marking of examination scripts, and processing of results.
The decision to embark on an industrial strike, according to the National Executive Committee of the Association from a statement copied to the Ghana News Agency and signed by its National President Professor Charles Marfo, was borne out of the government’s refusal to heed the calls by the association to improve their worsening conditions of service.
It included the research component of the Book and Research Allowance, market premium, and non-basic allowance.
Since academic works were brought to a halt, students indirectly were made to take decisions on their own. Observations made by Ghana News Agency, were that students were either moving to and fro their hostels, halls, libraries or campuses among others, while others had gone home.
In an interaction with some students, they expressed their dissatisfaction with the problem at hand and prayed for an immediate agreement between their lecturers and the government to enable them to get back to their lecture halls.
However, a few who had personal interests like a nursing mother at the Ghana Institute of Journalism, believed the time of the strike made life a bit more comfortable for her considering her condition as a new mother.
After the deliberations with Executives of UTAG and their various constituents nationwide on Friday, August 20, a reliable source from UTAG told the Ghana News Agency, that the strike had been totally called off.
As a result, lectures for the weekend students had begun, pending the negotiation with the government from Monday.