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Academic activities face disruptions as university unions, including the Tertiary Education Workers Union of Ghana (TEWUG), declare a strike over concerns related to pay, working conditions, and pensions.
Students at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) were left stranded as lecture halls remained locked on Thursday (1 February).
Checks on campus reveal that lectures had been cancelled until further notice even though the university says it is putting measures in place to mitigate the impact on students’ learning.
Some students who spoke to dailymailgh.com are concerned about missing classes.
“I didn’t know until a colleague told me that there was a strike, so I told him to check the lecture halls and indeed that was true. It wouldn’t be pleasant going forward this happened two years ago and now we have been hit again. This is going to affect students at the end”, said 21-year-old Mary Aggrey.
“We are having an afternoon class now and our lecturer says that as a result of the TEWUG strike, we are deprived of a microphone, and we could barely hear him teach. At the end of the day, studies would be halted, and we would be at the suffering end”, another said.
Several critical services have also experienced disruptions. According to our reporters, the university campus is now surrounded by accumulating trash, posing a significant health hazard to students. Numerous trash bins situated across the campus have not been cleared yet.
The Teachers and Education Workers Union-Ghana (TEWUG), joining forces with other unions, expects the strike to impact essential services in tertiary institutions.
Speaking to journalists, the national chairman of TEWUG, Sulemana Abdul-Rahman indicated that their members would only return to work if their concerns were addressed. He said taskforces will be put in place to ensure the total compliance of the over 10,000 members in all public universities.
“We are going to make sure that we have task forces across all the university campuses. We have local leaders across all the public universities so they will make sure they put in place the taskforce to make sure that they monitor for everybody to comply with the strike action,” he said.
He added that he expects every member of the Union to comply to press home their demands to the government.
“The local leaders, it is their duty to make sure that the strike action is enforced. And any loyal member of TEWU-Ghana, they’re rather angry and pushing us to declare this strike. So, there’s no way any loyal member of the public universities will defy the directives or orders as far as the union is concerned,” he stressed.
Meanwhile, the National Labour Commission (NLC) has lashed out at the labour unions within the educational sector currently on strike, describing their action as ‘unmeritorious’ and ‘needless’. Executive Secretary Mr Ofosu Asamoah is contemplating legal action to compel them to go back to work.
SOURCE: DAILY MAIL GH
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