The President of the University of Ghana Chapter of the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG), lecturers can no longer engage in fruitless negotiations with the government.
Dr. Samuel Nkumbaan claims that the Association has been in talks with the government since 2019 but that no progress has been made. On Newsfile on Saturday, he told Samson Lardy Ayenini that the government has been in constant talks with the Association to get them to terminate their strike.
We have said time and again that we cannot continue to negotiate in perpetuity. We had a one-month moratorium granted by the National Labour Commission that, within this period, get this thing done. How many months down the line?
September 22, we should have gotten this done by way of negotiation; we have not done that. So what has the NLC done to government that it constantly suspends our industrial action of August last year and go into negotiation within a month, by which time we should have sorted all of these?
Meanwhile, Kofi Bentil, a private legal practitioner, claims that the government has treated university instructors unfairly. Ignoring the lectures, he claims, is not the best way to handle the problem.
My suggestion to those running the system is that the court in such mass actions is not necessarily the silver bullet that solves everything; it can solve a number of them. But, ultimately, what will solve this intractable problem is respecting the other party.
Sit down with them, hear them out and make sure that you meet their demands halfway…but the whole idea of ignoring them surely will not solve this problem,” he said on the current affairs show
The National Labour Commission (NLC) has filed a lawsuit against UTAG for failing to follow a direction to end its strike. On February 3, the matter is anticipated to be heard. UTAG decided to continue the strike despite the NLC deeming it illegal, allowing the Commission to seek legal recourse in court.
The NLC is requesting that the court order UTAG to end its strike, which was proclaimed by the Commission on January 13, 2022. UTAG has stated that it will not end its strike unless its demands for better working conditions are granted.
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