Deputy Minister encourages TEWU members to seek more knowledge

A Deputy Minister of Education, Mrs Ernestina Amoah Tetteh, has counseled members of the Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU) to constantly upgrade themselves.

They should take advantage of opportunities including distance education, sandwich courses, evening, part-time and weekend courses available in the universities and colleges to attain higher qualifications and professional competence.

She said this in an address read for her at the fifth quadrennial national delegates’ conference of the TEWU Women’s Committee at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi.

The theme for the five-day meeting is, “Professional competence through available opportunities.”

Mrs Tetteh said the government through the Ghana Education Service (GES) has accepted the challenge for their upgrading as a national responsibility and would support them to become more professionally competent.

She said the expectation was that TEWU as a Union would sponsor many of its members on yearly basis to attend courses to make them efficient especially in information communication technology (ICT), record keeping, human relations, administrative skills and time management.

The Deputy Minister said the union could start these courses for its core executive members and gradually extend it to the regional and district staff.

She encouraged them to use dialogue to address all problems they might encounter with the GES not to resort to threats and strikes so that “together with the professional teachers we build a strong and relevant human resource for the total development of Ghana.”

Ms Johanna Hammond, National President of the TEWU Women’s Committee, said the issue of retention premium and Single Spine Salary Structure placement and migration of the union’s members must be tackled with urgency.

Source: GNA