{"id":199313,"date":"2016-03-16T10:42:57","date_gmt":"2016-03-16T10:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=199313"},"modified":"2016-03-16T10:42:57","modified_gmt":"2016-03-16T10:42:57","slug":"payment-teacher-allowances-likely-delay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2016\/03\/payment-teacher-allowances-likely-delay\/","title":{"rendered":"Payment of teacher allowances likely to delay"},"content":{"rendered":"

The payment of salary arrears and allowances owed the various teacher unions may delay as the teams from the Audit department and the Controller and Account General\u2019s Department (CAGD) validating the documents, are struggling with the workload<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n

The Audit Department and the CAGD following claims that a number of the teachers in the country employed by the Ghana Education Service presented fake certificates, are validating the teachers’ documents before payments are made.<\/p>\n

[contextly_sidebar id=”KQ2IVjcNsHI4TiZljVnqo4zqTapN9ib7″]The various teacher unions; the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) and the Coalition of Concerned Teachers (CCT), are demanding the payment of their salary arrears totaling about GHc16 million before the end of February 2016 or they will embark on a strike.<\/p>\n

After several meetings, Government released GHc1.5 million<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0as part payment, while the teachers’ documents are being validated before the rest of the amount is paid.<\/p>\n

So far, about 60,000 application forms have been submitted to the Auditor General\u2019s department for confirmation and subsequent payment.<\/p>\n

The Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) and the various teacher unions, had agreed to have the payments made immediately after the validation process on April 15.<\/p>\n

\"teachers<\/p>\n

But Head of Compensation and Working Conditions at GNAT, Ahenakwa Quarshie, told Citi News <\/strong>that it will be impossible for the commission to meet the deadline considering the workload.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn principle, we have agreed to that [deadline] but the volume of work is also such that the personnel who are working on them are finding it difficult to complete it on time.\u201d<\/p>\n

He explained that from February 25, 2015 till last week, \u201cout of the 29,000 documents, they have validated just 11,000 and they are claiming that we have close to 50,000 forms. So I doubt whether the period that they were given, they will be in a position to complete the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, I will not sound pessimistic so we will all keep our fingers crossed and see what happens. They are looking for some issues and each form has four to five attachments and they need to go through all of them in order to satisfy themselves that indeed this is a genuine form or not. That actually makes the process very slow,\u201d Ahenakwa-Quarshie added.<\/p>\n

\"teachers<\/p>\n

On whether their members will be angry over the delay, Mr. Quarshie said \u201cwe\u2019ve been sending them regular updates as to what they need to do.\u00a0With regards to the GHc10,000 that the audit service had paid,\u00a0we have posted that online and we are asking our members to go to their various district education offices to look for their names so they should not be worried,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

By: Godwin A. Allotey\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n

Follow @AlloteyGodwin<\/a>
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