Teacher trainees have expressed disappointment with President John Dramani Mahama for indicating he would not restore the scrapped teacher trainee allowance even if that would mean losing the December 7 elections.

President Mahama, while addressing students and faculty heads at the University of Cape Coast as part of his campaign tour in the Central Region, made the point that he would not beat a retreat on the issue of allowances for teacher trainees.

But the teacher trainees have described the president’s comments as unprofessional.

A statement co-signed by Ekow Paintsil Djan and Emmanuel Martin Owiredu, president and coordinator, respectively, of the Inter College Network (ICON), a student group, said: “Teacher trainees across the country have registered their … with such a statement coming from the president. The president on Tuesday said: ‘For partisan political purposes, you have your political opponent come and say: ‘When we come back, we will restore trainee allowances to Colleges of Education.’ For me it is better to lose the election on principle than win it on falsehood. This is an unprofessional statement from the president.”

“In 2012 the Government of Ghana scrapped these allowances given to teacher trainees. The government replaced this with the Student Loan Scheme which has even been quite difficult in its accessibility. We have petitioned and pleaded with the government for quite some years but there has since not been any positive response from them. We have been quiet on this matter for a while even after not responding to us.

“Though after several actions you didn't restore the allowance, we would rather plead with you, Mr President, to be silent on this matter than to open up our wounds. We again plead with him not to play a game of chance on this issue based on his political interests.

“Our tutors have begun a nationwide strike which takes effect today 13 September 2016, for the government's failure to migrate Colleges of Education tutors from the Ghana Education Service salary structure to National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE) salary structure. We again plead with the government to migrate our tutors to the NCTE salary structure as soon as possible for us to have peace and study as Level 300 students are starting classes today 13 September 2016. This strike we believe will have an adverse effect on teacher trainees and the country as a whole hence requiring the government to act immediately,” the group said.