The booing and ‘away! away!’ chants at the Deputy Minister of Education at the opening ceremony of the annual national council meeting of teachers disrupted the programme, leading to a walkout of the classroom instructors.
The gesture was in utter discontent with the failed promises by the government over the promise of providing each teacher in the country with one laptop.
As a result, the National Council of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) staged a walkout on the Deputy Education Minister, Prof Kingsley Nyarko, and their national leadership, for reneging on the promise.
This follows a 30% deduction of the teachers’ salaries to provide them with the laptops.
However, the teachers claim over 50,000 of its members have not received the laptops despite paying for them.
During their annual council meeting in the Ashanti Regional capital, Kumasi, the teachers registered their displeasure with their leadership and the minister for failing to honour the “one teacher one laptop” project.
Some teachers and members of the National Council of the Ghana National Association of Teachers booed the Deputy Minister, preventing him to deliver his address on behalf of the President.
“Away! Away! No laptop no council meeting!,” some council members chanted.
The teachers are demanding that the government fulfills its “One Teacher One Laptop” initiative after making the teachers pay up for them.
“Over two and half years now, some of our members haven’t received their laptops. Mainly some teachers at the kindergarten, education officers, and the Arabic teachers and some primary school teachers,” District Chairman of GNAT-Afigya Kwabre, Sarfo Sarpong, spoke on behalf of the group.
GNAT and two other teacher unions had earlier embarked on a strike in May to demand their laptops and other conditions of service. But according to Sarfo Sarpong, the time given to the government to fulfill its part of the deal has elapsed without any action.
“National Labour Commission serving as a mediator gave government June ending to honour its part of the contract by supplying the outstanding. Today, July 22, there are still over 50,000 laptops left to be supplied,” Sarfo Sarpong added.
The teachers say the absence of the laptops have adversely impacted teaching and learning since the national curriculum for teaching have been uploaded on the laptops, expressing the need to get them to facilitate learning.
“Some teachers have to do this manually. We claim to be digitalizing, what’s about the teaching space?. They’ve decided to give tablets to the students when we, teachers, need them for teaching,” Evans Temetey, District chairperson for Manya Krobo, said.
Some of the local leaders have suffered near attacks from their members.
“I went for BECE monitoring and the teachers attacked me, demanding where their laptops were. It is really embarrassing to have someone who has only spent 4-years in the teaching profession insult me who has been in this for close to two decades,” another district chairperson lamented.
The group has given the government a one-week ultimatum to commence processes of distributing the outstanding consignment of laptops.
