The Deputy Minister for Education, Dr Clement Apaak, has assured teachers that the concerns that triggered a planned strike over the placement of newly promoted teachers on appropriate salary scales will not recur.
He said the government has reached a clear arrangement with the teacher unions to ensure that teachers who have passed their promotional examinations are automatically placed on their legitimately earned salary scales without being required to submit additional payslips or documentation.
The assurance follows an emergency meeting between the leadership of the teacher unions and the Minister of Education, Haruna Iddrisu, on Monday, August 31, 2026, after the unions threatened industrial action over delays in implementing the promotions.
Speaking on Eyewitness News, Dr Apaak said the government was committed to honouring the agreement reached with the unions and ensuring that the issue does not return as a source of industrial tension.
“The assurance is predicated on the value this government led by John Dramani Mahama places on education,” he said.
He said education was too important to be disrupted by unresolved administrative challenges and stressed that government would uphold its side of the agreement.
“We are on record, and we expect to uphold our side of the bargain as a government of integrity, so the Ghanaian people can be rest assured that we will do the needful, because education is too important to be disrupted,” Dr Apaak said.
The Deputy Minister said the government had moved to address both major concerns raised by the teachers.
Under the new arrangement, teachers who have passed their promotional examinations will not be required to provide payslips or other documentation as a prerequisite for their placement on the appropriate salary scales.
Dr Apaak said the effective date for the new placement has also been agreed as January 2026, regardless of whether a teacher sat the promotional examination in the previous year or earlier this year.
“Whether you wrote last year or you wrote this year, in the interest of peace, camaraderie, and mutual respect, all teachers who wrote their promotional exams and have passed would be put on the scale that they deserve and the salaries based on their new scales,” he said.
He said the decision was reached as a compromise after discussions between government and the unions, with both sides making concessions to protect industrial peace in the education sector.
The government has also committed to resolving the placement of between 77,000 and 80,000 teachers by the end of September.
Dr Apaak acknowledged that the large number of teachers involved, as well as the transmission of information between the Ghana Education Service and the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department, could create administrative delays.
He said the government had therefore agreed on a contingency arrangement to ensure that no teacher is disadvantaged if all the teachers cannot be onboarded at once.
“We agreed with them; the Minister has given them his word that should there be a situation where we are not able to onboard all the 77,000 to 80,000 at once, we will do a supplementary to clear the backlog, but nobody would be shortchanged,” he said.
Source:Fiilafmonline/CitiNews
