The Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has raised issues of procedural breaches on the part of the Ghana Education Service (GES) in arriving at a decision to dismiss two headmasters and place seven on interdiction, pending further investigations into cases of charging unapproved fees under the Free Senior High School (SHS) policy.
The GES arrived at the decision after an interrogation session of a number of school heads on the matter at the national office in Accra on Thursday, 14 September 2017.
GNAT argues that the approach used in punishing the school heads was a total breach of procedure on the part of GES.
General Secretary for GNAT, David Acheampong, speaking to Class News, maintained that the matter should have been handled at the various district levels instead of the national level.
He explained that: “We have rules and regulations so if somebody has done something untoward, the rules say that you must investigate, you must give the person the reason you want to haul him before a disciplinary committee for an action to be taken. Whatever they have done is an infringement on our code of conduct, and so that person is supposed to be engaged at the location where the supposed crime has been committed. So you look at the district, if it’s at Accra, you send the person to the Accra district education office so that you constitute a disciplinary committee and then the committee will exert the punishment.
“Now if the person feels dissatisfied, the regulation says that he can appeal to the region. If the person is still not satisfied he can appeal to the national. But in this particular instance, these people have been punished at the national level which is total disregard for the district and the regional levels. And so, we are saying that procedurally, even though we are not saying they have not done something wrong, procedurally the steps they took are wrong.”
Mr Acheampong noted that leadership of GNAT will soon meet over the issue to discuss the way forward.
Source: Ghana/AccraFM.com
