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GES: Assist this ‘helpless’ teacher!!!
A 40-year-old basic school teacher in the Upper Manya Krobo District of the Eastern Region , is said to have been given compulsory retirement notice before his statutory retirement age is due.
The teacher, Mr Isaac Kwabla Tettey, is said to have been teaching for the past 20 years and is currently stationed at Sutapong , near Sekesua, in the Upper Manya Krobo District.
Reportedly, his employers, the Ghana Education Service (GES), recently notified him to proceed on retirement because he has reached the statutory retirement age of 60.
Mr Tettey is, however, protesting the directive ordering him to proceed on retirement; claiming that he was born on 31st December 1981 not 1961 as being contended by his employers.
Indeed, Mr Tettey places the contentious ‘grievous anomaly’ surrounding his untimely retirement at the door-steps of the GES.
Reportedly, Mr Tettey’s records at the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) , clearly indicate that his birthdate is 31st December 1981, as filled by him when he signed and submitted the SSNIT form at the time he was employed.
Speaking to 3FM Radio recently, Mr Tettey traced the anomaly of his retirement date to the District Directorate of Education that submitted his personal records to the GES Head Office in Accra.
Mr Tettey said: ” I think that the person in-putting the information to the GES Head Office made it 1961 instead of 1981.
“It was after I received my notice of retirement that I observed that there was something wrong.”
He said, when he complained to SSNIT about the anomaly, he was directed to go to the GES to rectify it.
According to Mr Tettey, the GES had requested for his Class One Attendance Register to confirm his year of birth but when he followed up to the school where he attended Class One, the Headmistress could not trace the Class One Attendance Register.
From the way Mr Tettey was lamenting on 3FM Radio, his claim could be a very genuine clerical or typographical error on the part of his employers.
But all the same, investigation can establish the truth or falsity of his assertions. Shakespeare says:”There is no art to find the mind’s construction on the face.”
So, it is only proper investigation into the matter that will assist the GES to arrive at the truth.
In Ghana, it is not common for an individual teacher to walk to a ‘news station’ to ‘trumpet’ his plight to the hearing of the entire nation.
Rather, it is teacher- labour institutions like the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) and National Association of Graduate Teachers ( NAGRAT) which are often heard in the media ‘battling’ government over salaries and other conditions of service.
Mr Tettey is said to be a member of GNAT. So, GNAT must take this matter up with the GES to ensure that the matter is expeditiously resolved.
Some teachers, however, contend that there are a lot of bureaucratic bottlenecks in the ‘ large womb’ of the GES ; to the extent that even ‘ minor’ ‘ teacher-issues’ take years and years to be resolved by the GES.
Please, GES, if what the teachers are saying is true, then surprise the whole nation by expediting action on this particular matter.
A research study of “Perceived Consequences of Unplanned Retirement Staff of Educational Institutions” has, however, recommended that Institutions should invest in pre-retirement activities for their staff before their retirement.
The four authors of the study are Adwoa Kwegyiriba, Olivia Agyemang, Joseph Eshun and Roland Osei Mensah.
The four researchers have called for greater sensitsation on pre-retirement planning, contending that workers must be alerted about perceived retirement consequences very early in their working life, so as to allow adequate time to prepare to adjust to better life towards retirement.
The researchers recommend that an employee’s date of retirement should be attached to his or her appointment letter to keep the retirement date in mind, right from the very beginning of one’s working life.
The four scholars recommend also that government should establish a policy that would compel all organisations and Institutions in the country to organise retirement seminars for their employees, who have between 10 and 15 years to retire.
This, they claim, would give them better space to prepare before their retirement.
The fact of the matter is that, many retirees in Ghana do not have decent retirement life. This is because Ghanaian workers and their employers do not prepare adequately for this phase of life through education and planning.
Really, it takes considerable time and resources to prepare an individual to enter employment, and so similarly, the employee has to be prepared adequately to exit employment, when he is due for retirement.
Many workers who may not know what to do with their lives after retirement, often turn to be hopeless.
As we patiently wait for the outcome of Mr Tettey’s retirement ‘palava’ from the GES , this column urges government and all employment institutions and organisations to urgently consider the study undertaken by the four scholars and actualise some of their lofty recommendations; to ease the burden of prospective retirees.
Contact email/WhatsApp of the author :
asmahfrankg@gmail.com (0505556179)
BY G. FRANK ASMAH
One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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