Executive Director of the Institute for Education Studies (IFEST), Peter Anti Partey, has observed that the government has always been reactive to significant issues of concern in Ghana especially, with labour unions.
In an interview with Sefah Danquah on eTV Ghana’s “Fact Sheet,” Mr. Peter Anti indicated that the government have shown less regard to the interest of the labour unions and put in very little effort in resolving their plights and concerns.
“The issue of the strike, the teachers notified the authorities in May and that is the reason sometimes I really don’t understand our leaders. A group of people have told you that if you don’t negotiate with us and pay us this a month, on the first week of July we will go on a strike. This was in May and you sit down, may ends, June ends and truly when we got to July, they stood by their words then you start calling them for a meeting. Who does that?” he said baffled.
“For me I think that leadership has not shown any serious commitment towards the plight of the ordinary teacher and by extension to the Ghanaian worker. Some of these things will continue to happen and we shouldn’t be surprised.”
According to him, the government’s approach to ambush the unions was expected therefore comes as no surprise that the negotiations ended prematurely as the representatives of the teachers walked away.
“We have followed how some of these things always occur and we have noted that there was a strategy to force the teachers to call of the strike. The only way they could have done that is to try to say that there was some sort of negotiations going on and technically if you’re on a negotiating table you’re not allowed to go on strike.”
“So let’s bring in other labor unions and let’s say that we’re starting a negotiate with them and then that will force the teachers to call off the strike then we start with negotiations,” as was the strategy of the government according to Mr Anti.
By: Jude Tackie