IT is great news that the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) has decided to call off its strike which kept them away from the lecture theatres in our public universities for nearly three weeks.
The UTAG decision to go back to the lecture theatres comes in the wake of the resolution of the impasse between the association and the government over UTAG’s unpaid arrears.
There had been a marathon meeting between the government and UTAG on Thursday to resolve the grievances, attended by the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Dr Kwabena Duffour.
It is the wish of the DAILY GRAPHIC that whatever decisions were arrived at in connection with addressing UTAG’s grievances and demands would be implemented to the letter to forestall any future industrial action by the lecturers.
Already, our public university students have lost three weeks in the first semester of this academic year and we hope nothing will be done to make the situation any worse.
Now that the lecturers have been promised their arrears, leading to industrial peace on our campuses, we would like to appeal to them to make up for lost time, so that our students are not short-changed.
Snippets of information gathered from the campuses indicate that there are pockets of aggrieved students who feel cheated by the fact that while the strike was on, foreign students were attending lectures.
We call on the authorities of the various universities to devise the appropriate strategies to assuage the fears among the student body that the period lost to the strike will be recovered, one way or another.
While commending both UTAG and the government for seeing eye to eye with each other to bring the impasse to an end, we would like to single out President John Evans Atta Mills for greater commendation for his timely intervention which led to the softening of the stance taken by UTAG on the issue.
The President’s decision to set up a committee to examine the lecturers’ demands brought the elements of transparency and fairness into the resolution of the matter and we thank His Excellency for displaying such astuteness.
Having said so, let us now turn attention to the strike by the Polytechnic Teachers Association of Ghana (POTAG) which is still ongoing. Although we are aware of efforts to resolve that one too, we call on President Mills to step in quickly to end it sooner than later.
The DAILY GRAPHIC is of the belief that since education is the bedrock of development, the educational sector must not experience any turmoil that is likely to discourage our youth from pursuing education to the highest level possible.
While we are at it, we would like to say that the situation in most senior high schools (SHSs) is, to say the least, very regrettable.
The lack of both classrooms and dormitories has rendered first-year students and their parents uncomfortable. Scenes of freshers loitering or grouped under trees on the compounds of our SHSs are common, even when the students are supposed to be in class.
As for dormitory accommodation, the least said about it the better. The question is: If a fresher from Tamale who has gained admission to Achimota SHS cannot get boarding accommodation on the school compound, where should he or she stay?
The DAILY GRAPHIC suggests that if the government cannot provide the classrooms and dormitories in our SHSs, it could invite parents to help out. After all, the same parents help, in no small measure, in putting up magnificent edifices in private basic schools which, invariably, are privately owned.
All of us are stakeholders in the education of our youth and, in the view of the paper, no contribution will be too small in our collective bid to improve facilities in our public SHSs.
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