Misrepresentation of issues of CETAG’s intended strike on GhanaWeb

An article was published on GhanaWeb by Nicholas Tetteh, titled: “CETAG kicks against staff by migration by GTEC, threatens strike by June 18” about CETAGs intention to embark on a strike. The report struck me as amateurish or ill-intentioned and not worth being in the public domain, hence my reason for criticizing it. The article appears to have been put together lazily and the editors did not also do due diligence in their editing.

Misleading Title

From the article’s title, it would appear that CETAG’s main reason for embarking on the strike was that they did not agree to a staff migration. The reality is that the main reason for CETAG’s intended strike was that the employer had failed or refused to implement arbitral awards issued by National Labour Commission (NLC), of which migration is not part. Migration only came into the picture because one of the arbitral awards, thus extension of generic allowances of university teaching staff to College teaching staff with similar qualifications, was being changed into a full-blown migration, and in a way that would disadvantage most of CETAG’s members. The title of the article was presented as if the writer had not been following CETAG’s issues, and so did not know what was really happening.

Misrepresentation of Facts

The first paragraph has “Teachers of the 46 Colleges of Education in Ghana”. It should read “Teachers of the 46 public Colleges of Education in Ghana” since there are more than 46 colleges of education in Ghana but the issue has to do with only the public colleges of education. In paragraph 2, the writer claimed that CETAG would go on strike “if the National Labour Commission (NLC) failed to comply with the payment of Compulsory Arbitration Award”. Also in the last paragraph, he wrote, “The association leaders warned they would decline any directive by the National Labour Commission to desist from any strike if the commission failed to respond to their request to process the payment of their allowance by the due date.” It is not the NLC that is responsible for implementing the compulsory arbitration awards, but rather the employer, which consists of various government ministries and agencies. In paragraph 3, the writer claimed that CETAG said there would be “disturbances in the colleges” if the government did not quickly address their grievances. This claim is contrary to the actual action CETAG threatened to take, which is strike. In paragraph 11, the book and research allowances of College staff are quoted as “1000 and 1464 dollars”. The research allowance should be quoted in Ghana cedis, so it should read “1000 dollars and 1464 Ghana cedis”.

Logical and Grammatical Errors

The title already has a glaring error which would make it incomprehensible to a reader who might not be abreast with the issue. The first “by” should not be in the title. In the first paragraph, there is a mistake in the full name of FWSC. The author wrote “Salary” instead of “Salaries”. Technically, the author wrote about an entity different from the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission of Ghana. In paragraph 2, “industry” should be “industrial”. The position in which the word is used requires an adjective, not a noun. In paragraph 1, “Fair Wages and Salary Commission” should be preceded by the definite article “the” since he was using the name of the commission as an adjective, not as a noun, in this case. In paragraph 10, we read “… every staff of the college currently qualifies equivalent to the public universities…” I’m finding it difficult to understand that phrase. I guess he was trying to say that every staff of the colleges of education has a qualification equivalent to a qualification in the public universities.

Some CETAG Documents to Enlighten the Public

Conclusion

From the foregoing, I can conclude that the writer was not competent or careful enough in writing his article. It is therefore filled with all sorts of grammatical and logical errors. Also, it seems the writer was unable to correctly interpret the documents issued by CETAG, so he misrepresented the issues. I therefore appeal to readers to disregard that article if they come across it. This is not to say that I am perfect, but the type, level and amount of errors in the article makes it inappropriate for public consumption.