<<Print>>

The Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare says it fully supports the recommendation of the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) that no salaries be paid to members of the Polytechnic Teachers Association of Ghana (POTAG) for the period they remain on strike. A press statement yesterday signed by Moses Asaga, the sector minister, said the public sector comprises many groups all of which demand some form of entitlement or the other. �It must not seem to be saying that groups should be given whatever they demand, no matter how unjustifiable or unfounded those demands are and no matter their effect on the wage bill, �the statement said and stressed that whatever was given any group of public service workers had rippling effect on discussions with other groups and set off its own snowballing effects on agitations in the larger public sector, which is always difficult to handle. The statement said the FWSC had done its very best for polytechnic teachers and shown much good faith with them. Giving the background of the issue, the statement recalled that following POTAG strike in 2010, the National Labour Commission (NLC) appointed a mediator to mediate the impasse between PTAG and FWSC. At the end of the mediation, an agreement was reached on December 20, 2010 to the effect that the existing gap in remuneration levels within analogous institutions with similar job criteria and schemes of service should be bridged to bring fairness and equity in salary administration. The statement said in line with this, a grading structure was agreed with POTAG which had removed any disparity in salary levels between university teachers and polytechnic teachers. �It is important to stress that currently there is no gap in salary levels between polytechnic teachers and university teaches�. It said mindful of the mediation agreement of December 2010, and cognizant of the need to maintain the integrity of the Polytechnics in terms of their ability to attract the needed skills to achieve their mandate, and to prevent seepage of teachers to the universities, the FWSC finally gave to the polytechnics, a grading structure which was basically the same as that agreed with the university teachers. The statement said it therefore means that, technically the FWSC had totally eliminated any perceived or real inequities that existed between polytechnics in the grades of their teachers and university teachers. �Prior to the discussions towards migration of the Polytechnic teachers onto the SSSS, the difference in salary between the polytechnic teacher and the university teachers was about 55%. This situation, as observed during the mediation, was not good enough. The 55% gap was a vast deviation from the 20% gap that had always existed between the polytechnics and universities,� it said. The statement said polytechnics and universities had different mandates and, indeed their work was different, and they were not the same in the scheme of things. It said indeed the Statutes/Charters that establish the two institutions were clear on this matter. Moreover, the National Council for Tertiary Education, the regulatory body for tertiary institutions, also had clear guidelines on these matters as to which institutions were analogous to which institutions based on the Charter creating the institution. During the discussions on the applicable Market Premium for Polytechnic Teachers, the FWSC with the mediation agreement in mind, offered POTAG a Market Premium factor of 0.8 (80%) from its initial offer of factor 0.6 (60%). POTAG, however, rejected the premium factor of 0.8 and tabled a premium factor of 1.25 (125%). The FWSC�s offer of a factor of 0.8 was to move the gap in total compensation between the university teachers and polytechnic teachers from the existing 55% to 15% in line with its aim to use the SSSS to reduce the gap.