General News of Friday, 23 February 2007

Source: The Sun

No salary for teacher trainees after 17 months

TEACHER Trainees in the Amansie West District of Ashanti Region have appealed to the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports and the government to release their salaries that have been outstanding for 17 months.
“We have been teaching since 2005, without salaries and if government does not intervene to save us, the situation would compel some of us to leave the job,” they told The Sun.

In a petition to the District Director of Education at Manso-Nkwanta, the Secretary to the Teacher Trainees, Mr. Samuel Opoku noted that the 2005 group of the teacher trainees that were posted to the Amansie West District have been in the classroom for 17 months without salaries.
He said, most of them have been swallowed by debts because of the peculiar situation they have found themselves in.
“Our problems are always virtually doubling everyday, looking at the economy of Ghana at the moment,” they stated.
“We have stretched ourselves all these months to get our salaries, but it has been unsuccessful”, they said.
According to the trainee teachers, the burden of debt, starvation, disgrace at the hands of creditors and the like was bringing the teaching profession to national ridicule.
The trainee teachers therefore appealed to the government to step in to save them from the starvation and humiliation they have been subjected to, due to non-payment of their salaries.