The National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) last week raised concerns that are affecting teachers in the pretertiary schools in the country.
According to the management of the Ghana Education Service, as part of salary administration of the Public Service. salaries are validated every month before they are paid. The system involves validators confirming names of staff and amounts due to them.
Inherent in this system, is the option to query any name or amount that has been indicated on the payroll to be paid for that particular month. In instances where strange names have appeared on the payroll and generally where there is a stated reason why staff should not be paid for that particular month but such a staff is programmed to be paid, the Validator should indicate that the person should not be paid or should be paid but not with the amount indicated.
Recently. Management of GES received a complaint from the Teacher Unions, including NAGRAT that some of the Validators were abusing the system by stopping salaries of some staff on personal differences, instead of the official reasons.
The consensus at the discussion was that Management of GES should issue guidelines on how stoppage of salaries of staff should be handled as a way of dealing with the abuses.
The guidelines have since been issued and copied the Teacher Unions. The crux of the guidelines is that where there is a justifiable official reason why a particular salary should be stopped, the validator should immediately inform the Cost Centre development and the reason for that.
