Universities Senior Staff On Strike
The members of the Universities Senior Staff Association (SSA) have laid down their tools to drive home their demand for the payment of unpaid Tier-2 Pension contributions and the reinstitution of overtime allowance.
The Association earlier this year served notice about intentions to withdraw their services on January 15 if their concerns were not addressed.
At a press conference on Wednesday, January 18, the President of the Association, Isaac Donkor, said the government had failed to act on the demands.
“The ultimatum expired three days ago. We sat as leadership gave the government an extra 48-hour ultimatum. Till now we have heard nothing from government.”
Unpaid Contributions
According to the Association, its National Executive Council (NEC) was informed about the government’s failure to pay their Tier 2 contributions to the Board of Trustees to manage the funds during a meeting in November 2023.
The non-payment, it said, had been in place since February 2023.
It grieves that its members’ “years of dedicated service have come to nought for our 2020 to 2023 retirees, who have been denied their rightful lump sums and left to face abject poverty and illness in their twilight years”.
Overtime Allowance
Additionally, the group is up for the reinstitution of overtime allowance which has been scrapped, plunging their members into hardship, it said.
“University Senior Staff were dealt a blow when the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) and the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) abruptly directed university management to cut off overtime allowance for weekend and holiday work. This unilateral alteration of our established Conditions of Service creates significant uncertainty and hardship for dedicated staff.”
This, it asserts, violates the Labour Act.
Demands
The SSA is demanding that the government honours all outstanding contributions together with the appropriate interest using the three per cent penalty rates as stipulated by the Pension’s Act, Act 766 section 64, unlike the use of simple interest rates when a similar incident occurred over Tier-2 pensions for 2010-2016.
It also wants the government to prioritize the recalculation of accrued interest on Tier-2 pensions for 2010-2016, as agreed upon in the Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) signed on July 25, 2022, and the immediate payment of outstanding arrears to retirees.
Additionally, it demanded the withdrawal of the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) and Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) decision to scrap overtime allowance for senior staff.
