Tamale, July 29, GNA - The Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has called on the government to publish a White Paper on the Pension Report without delay to show its intended line of action. The Association noted that since the Presidential Commission on Pensions submitted its report to President John Agyekum Kufuor several months ago nothing had been heard of it.

Mr. John Nyoagbe, a Deputy General Secretary of GNAT, made the call at the closing of a GNAT/Canadian Teachers Federation (CTF) Project Overseas in-service workshop in Tamale on Friday. stakeholders on a monetisation policy for public sector incomes the process has stalled.

Mr. Nyoagbe said this notwithstanding GNAT had observed a selective approach at implementing a public sector incomes policy, which was giving leverage to certain sectors while putting others especially the education sector in a serious disadvantage. It said many teachers had expressed concern about this and called on the government to honour it's undertaking to constitute the Task Force to ally the fears of teachers.

but said the large numbers posed challenges such as inadequate teachers and insufficient school facilities. To address these problems GNAT appealed to the government to increase the Capitation Grant from 30,000 cedis per pupil to 50,000 to enable schools to conduct and administer three good tests a year.

Mr. Issah Ketekewu, Deputy Northern Regional Minister, said the government had introduced the Capitation Grant and the School Feeding Programme as part of efforts to encourage the enrolment. He said government was also constructing more schools blocks and providing logistics to ensure effective teaching and learning and to encourage gender parity in schools.

The Deputy Regional Minister appealed to French teachers to encourage students to take the language seriously. Mr. Ketekewu advised teachers to desist from absenteeism, lateness, drunkenness and the non-preparation of lesson notes. He said the government was committed to improve the working conditions of teachers and appealed to them to exercise restraint while efforts were been made to meet their demands.

Mr. Dean Kokoras leader of the CTF team urged teachers to strive to update and improve their knowledge to teach their pupils effectively. A total of 167 teachers from all the 18 Districts in the Northern Region at the workshop were taken through Leadership and Administration for Basic and Second Cycle schools, Mathematics for Senior and Junior Secondary Schools, Science for Teachers, Pre-technical skills for JSS teachers and French for JSS teachers.

The participants were also educated on the HIV/AIDS pandemic, it's mode of transmission, preventive measures and the latest insight and clinical breakthrough that enable pregnant mothers living with HIV/AIDS to safe-guard their innocent offspring from the infection.