The Upper West Regional Council of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), has warned that it would not allow any group of teachers or faceless personalities to destroy the structures of the Association.
The Regional Council in a statement read at a news conference at Wa on Tuesday said GNAT did not have any branch called Concerned GNAT
members.
It described the Coalition of Concerned GNAT and National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) members as “an alien group with diabolical motives aimed at destroying GNAT through the use of unconventional unconstitutional methods.”
The Regional Council said that the Coalition was calling for was a calculated attempt to weaken the GNAT as an organization and to destroy its time tested structures and procedures.
Coalition of Concerned GNAT and NAGRAT members has been agitating for the removal of their executives from office due to their inability to negotiate for a better placement of teachers on the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS).
They are also calling for the amendment of the GNAT constitution to make the term of office of appointed of staff of the organization limited to a two-term period of four years.
The Regional Chairman of the Association, Mr Sebastian Sorinye, who addressed the conference, advised all GNAT members to distance
themselves from the Coalition.
He said teachers in the Region had confidence in the leadership of GNAT because it had not wavered from its mandate.
Mr Sorinye said there was also no need for any emergency delegates’ conference to amend the constitution as demanded by the aggrieved teachers because the provisions were still very relevant and even more so as it was reviewed in 2006 and in 2010.
He said: “We would like our members to get involved in the associations’ activities so that they would understand its operations and contribute their quota towards its improvement”.
Mr Sorinye expressed regretted that errors occurred during the migration of the Ghana Education Service (GES) staff onto the Single
Spine Salary Structure resulting in some teachers getting lower salaries and others receiving nothing in February this year.
He said that this development could not be used to measure the competence of GNAT leadership.
Mr. Sorinye advised the agitating teachers to target their demonstrations at the management of the GES and the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department who were responsible for the
processing of their salaries.