Education Specialist and Program Evaluator, Divine Kpe has advised the government to continuously engage with teacher unions in Ghana over their financial demands during industrial action.
His comments come at the back of the frequency of industrial action and its impact on the educational sector in Ghana.
In an interview with UniversNews, Divine Kpe stated that the prolonged absence of educational workers from school can increase social vices among the youth, especially young girls.
“So the constant strike we have been having obviously has an impact on teaching and learning in our schools…it has an implication especially for girls when they have to be in a house for a number of times; it comes with social vices because the school also aside been an environment for learning serves is a safety net for the girls particularly, so if they’re not in school, it means they are exposed to other forms of social vices. So the way forward practically is for governments to continue to engage the unions so that we don’t get to a point where the unions will have to threaten a strike before we have response, it is very important for government to have a mechanism for continuous engagement to address the issues that these unions bring to their attention.”
According to him, there should be effective negotiation from the sides of both government and the education unions to address the issue of industrial action.
“If the two parties can be having a continuous dialogue, it will address some of these issues, because once there is a continuous dialogue, the teacher unions would have known that they are being in a talk with government and this is government’s position [on the issue], hence they will not be threatening strike.”
Divine Kpe also called on educational workers to be considerate of their demands to the government.
“It is very important that as much as the strike by the unions to get their issues resolved may also be legitimate, it is very important that at times the unions are also able to come to a point of compromise so that when they meet the government, they can be able to bend some of their demands a bit.”
