NAGRAT Prez: Blame Fair Wages Commission If the Children Fail in Their Exams

The President of the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), Christian Addae Opoku has divulged that Ghanaians should blame Fair Wages and Salaries Commission if the final year students who are writing their West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination fail. He explicated that the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission is frustrating the NAGRAT and GNAT negotiation process with the Ghana Education Service. He stressed that GES and the two unions agreed to resolve the issue in two weeks but according to the NAGRAT president, Fair Wages Commission wrote back to the associations that they do not have the right to negotiate any monetary and non-monetary matters raised in their collective agreement. Speaking to Okay FM in an interview with Kwame Nkrumah, Mr. Addae Opoku said that Fair Wages Commission should not make any statement on the teachers strike; adding that all these problems are based on their intransigence, since it refused to comply with the Labor Commission ruling that the Fair Wages Commission should negotiate the union�s petition. According to the president of NAGRAT, the union petitioned that their Collective Agreement which entails allowances and teachers retention premium had expired, as six weeks was set aside to resolve the petition but Fair Wages Commission aborted the agreement. He stressed that the teachers maintenance allowance for the past fifteen months have not been paid; adding that the incremental credit has been confiscated by government for the past three years, while these same incentives are enjoyed by other government workers. The NAGRAT president said that their promotion instead of every four years now takes seven years before they are called up for interview, and for so many years the West African Examinations Council have not paid their invigilation allowances. He stated that every worker deserved fair incentives.