Apam, April 10, GNA - Heads of Basic schools in the Gomoa District have appealed to the Ghana Education Service (GES) to pay their responsibility allowance, which has been in arrears for over a year. They said the GES on the other hand should inform them if the allowance had been withdrawn since keeping them in suspense demoralised them.

Heads of Primary and Junior Secondary Schools are paid a responsibility allowance of 10,000 cedis a month while Assistant Heads got 8,000 cedis.

At a meeting at Apam on Friday, the Head Teachers said they would advice themselves if they did not hear anything about the allowance by the end of May 2005.

Nana Mireku II, Headmaster of Gomoa Assin D/A JSS who was their spokesman said the head teachers who were the frontline supervisors had to be motivated but unfortunately, the GES was rather thwarting their efforts to play their supervisory roles effectively. We know that the responsibility allowance is too meagre but how can we talk about increment when the meagre one could not be paid promptly, he asked.

Nana Mireku, who is also the Gomoa District Chairman of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), said strict supervision made the difference between public schools and the private ones. He said that to correct the anomaly funds and logistics had to be made available for the people who were expected to play the supervisory role.

We cannot talk about quality education if we do not want to spend, he said.

He said the 50,000 cedis monthly transport and travelling allowance paid to Circuit Supervisors to enable them to go round the schools should be reviewed to reflect the increase in the prices of petroleum products.