More than 600 members of the Teachers and Education Workers Union (TEWU) will exit the education service through retirement this year.
This is expected to impose huge workload on members of TEWU in the education sector.
Leadership of TEWU has issued a strong warning to government to recruit more staff or risk their anger.
The General Secretary of TEWU, King James Azortibah gave the warning when he addressed a news conference in Accra on May 19.
The news conference was to call on government to ensure that adequate staff are recruited to fill vacancies for non-teaching staff. Available figures from TEWU indicate that 200 non-teaching staff members retire every month.
These members include the kitchen staff, accountants, auditors, the security and other non-teaching staff. TEWU for the past five years have called on government to recruit staff but that has fallen on deaf ears.
Mr James azortibah called on government to act swiftly to save the sector from collapse.
“As we speak, by the end of this year 2025, per our calculation based on TEWU membership we have listed about 600 education support personnel of TEWU members to retire. So if this is the projection of those retiring only May to December 2025, then one can imagine a situation by the end of the year in terms of the numbers exiting without replacement,” he noted.
He added, “It is no secret that in our schools you will find one security man on duty in the school which has about 1000 students.”
National Chairperson of TEWU, Salamatu Braimah Mahama expressed concern about neglect of TEWU members.
“If the sanitary labourer does not clean, the atmosphere will not be conducive for teaching and learning, if the drive does not drive that key officer to wherever he needs to go and push things, nothing will happen. If the driver does not drive the students to the industries, it means that they will not get the practical aspect of what they are learning,” she noted.
Currently, TEWU has sought the support of Education International to ask governments on the African continent to invest 20 percent of its national budget into education.
Part of the amount, the Education International, has proposed, should be used to finance education support staff.
Education International Representative, Anais Dayamba called for adequate conditions of service for the education support staff.
“We call on the government to ensure that we have good salaries, working conditions for staff’,” she said.
Other speakers at an event to demand support from government pleaded that much attention should be turned to education support staff.
