Teachers urge GES to pay legacy salary arrears

About 5,000 teachers across the country have asked the Ghana Education Service (GES) to forward their data to the  Ministry of Finance and the Controller and Accountant General’s Department to effect payment of their salary arrears between 2012 and 2016.

President of the Association of Aggrieved Teachers on Legacy Arrears, Nana Opoku Foster, in a petition signed and copied to the Ghana News Agency, said the three-month pay policy at the time sought to audit the list of claims presented by the Inter-Personal and Payroll Database (IPPD) coordinators of each District to ascertain the truth in each claim.

It said because the process would take a little longer, the first three months of salaries in arrears were to be paid and the rest at a later date after the audit.

The petition said the strategy was an excellent way of resolving the age-old corruption, where some IPPD coordinators presented ghost names and claim fortunes as arrears.

It said the affected teachers became aggrieved due to the unending processes by the Ghana Audit Service, adding that the previous government made some payments before they were voted out of office.

The petition said the government’s promise to pay the rest of the affected teachers in January 2021 did not materialise.

Nana Opoku Foster said the executives of the Association had a meeting with the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES) and other government appointees, where they were told the 2,550 affected teachers would be paid at the end of October and November 2021.

Source: GNA