Students of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology have been left stranded on campus as they are denied access to some facilities on the first day of the Tertiary Education Workers Union of Ghana strike.
TEWU-Ghana declared an indefinite nationwide strike following an emergency National Executive Council meeting on Wednesday over what they say is the government’s failure to pay extra-duty and car maintenance allowances and Tier-2 pension funds, among others.
The National President, Sulemana Abdul-Rahman, speaking after the commencement of the strike told JoyNews that taskforces will be put in place to ensure the total compliance of the over 10,000 members in all public universities.
“We are going to make sure that we have task forces across all the university campuses. We have local leaders across all the public universities so they will make sure they put in place the taskforce to make sure that they monitor for everybody to comply with the strike action,” he said.
He added that he expects every member of the Union to comply to press home their demands to the government.
“The local leaders, it is their duty to make sure that the strike action is enforced. And any loyal member of TEWU-Ghana, they’re rather angry and pushing us to declare this strike. So there’s no way any loyal member of the public universities will defy the directives or orders as far as the union is concerned,” he stressed.
On the campus of KNUST, the industrial action of TEWU-Ghana is already biting hard as students are denied access to the university’s library and lecture halls which remain closed as a result of the strike.
Stranded, disappointed students were seen loitering about on campus during a JoyNews visit to the campus this morning.
President of TEWU-Ghana KNUST, Charles Arthur is says while he is pleased with the compliance, he warned that should government continue to play hardball, the university’s management as well as managements of other public universities will have no choice but to shut down their campuses.
“We are on strike, and if we’re on strike we don’t come to work. It will affect them [the students] because they will not have access to come to the library and the library is an essential area. You cannot come to the university without library so even I we decide to close the library alone it will affect the quality, because where are they going to do their assignment, presentation etc.
“So practically it’ll affect them. So we’re saying that the government will have to listen to whatever that we are saying so that it will not go further. Because if it goes further, we don’t close the universities, the management that runs the universities they have the power to close it.
“But we can state on authority that we’ll reach that point that we will reach that point that university management will have no choice but to close the universities,” he said.
