The Bolgatanga Technical University (BTU) chapters of the Technical University Teachers’ Association of Ghana (TUTAG) and the Technical University Senior Administrators’ Association of Ghana (TUSAAG) have suspended their strike action effective today, September 1, 2023.
Members of TUTAG and TUSAAG at the Bolgatanga Technical University, last Friday, withdrew their services over what they said was an attempt by the school’s Vice-Chancellor to vary their conditions of service.
According to the two unions, the Vice-Chancellor, under the pretext of ambiguities in the Technical Universities Act (2016), was seeking to pay their members retirement benefits only spanning from the effective date of the newly signed conditions of service instead of their period of service at the institution.
This, they had argued, was contrary to the Act and a deliberate attempt to vary their conditions of service to their disadvantage.
They, therefore, laid down their tools to compel the Vice-Chancellor to rescind his decision.
The strike action, which took effect on August 25, 2023, almost threw the academic calendar out of gear as the end of semester exams which was scheduled for Monday, August 28, is yet to be commenced, leaving students frustrated.
But in a press statement dated August 31, 2023, the unions announced a suspension of their industrial action.
The decision, they explained, was arrived at following a between the unions and the school management mediated by the Governing Council in which a consensus was reached.
“Separate emergency meetings of the Bolgatanga branches of the Technical University Teachers’ Association of Ghana (TUTAG) and the Technical University Senior Administrators’ Association of Ghana (TUSAAG) were held on 31st August, 2023.
These meetings were held to deliberate on the consensus reached at the meeting held on August 29, 2023 between TUTAG and TUSAAG on one hand and the University Management on the other with the Governing Council as the mediator,” it said.
“It was unanimously agreed at both meetings that the strike action be suspended with effect from Friday, 1st September, 2023”.
