{"id":247201,"date":"2016-09-11T06:29:41","date_gmt":"2016-09-11T06:29:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=247201"},"modified":"2016-09-11T06:29:41","modified_gmt":"2016-09-11T06:29:41","slug":"nagrat-chides-mahama-over-scrapped-trainee-allowances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=247201","title":{"rendered":"NAGRAT chides Mahama over scrapped trainee allowances"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) has expressed its disappointment with President John Mahama&#8217;s resolve not to restore \u00a0teacher trainee allowance even if it meant losing the elections.<\/p>\n<p>President\u00a0Mahama on Thursday tweeted saying: \u201cOn the matter of trainee teacher allowances, better to lose on principle than win using falsehood. We&#8217;ll not reverse the decision. #UCC Forum.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>[contextly_sidebar id=&#8221;JFVxWU12SCP8AJWtN7ftAbkvDwvnQZEd&#8221;]But the NAGRAT President, Christian Adai Poku retorted, &#8220;If the principle is not going to help the system, you don\u2019t stick by the principle and say I am gambling my political career with it. When it happens like that you put very body in a very difficult position.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He thus\u00a0called\u00a0on President Mahama to review his decision\u00a0saying, &#8220;we have to look at the issue as a matter of policy and not of politics.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>President Mahama&#8217;s resolve will not neuter NAGRAT as Mr. Adai Poku maintained that his association \u201cwill continue to advocate our position on this matter and we are always ready to engage government.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Background<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Government scrapped teacher trainee allowance in 2014 in a move that was met with stiff opposition from trainee teachers who went as far as demonstrations to compel government to reintroduce the allowances.<\/p>\n<p>Government explained that the policy of trainee allowances was to be replaced by a student loan scheme which was available for all degree awarding institutions.<\/p>\n<p>The decision according to government was also to allow an increase in the number of trainees admitted into various training colleges in the country.<\/p>\n<p>Teacher trainees subsequently vowed to vote against the NDC government if it failed to restore the payment of their allowances before the 2016 general elections.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>By: Delali Adogla-Bessa\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) has expressed its disappointment with President John Mahama&#8217;s resolve not to restore \u00a0teacher trainee allowance even if it meant losing the elections. President\u00a0Mahama on Thursday tweeted saying: \u201cOn the matter of trainee teacher allowances, better to lose on principle than win using falsehood. We&#8217;ll not reverse the decision. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":237572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,128,1204],"class_list":["post-247201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-ghana-news","tag-john-mahama","tag-nagrat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=247201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/237572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=247201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=247201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=247201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}