The National Graduates Association of Teachers (NAGRAT) has expressed displeasure over how authorities of a Senior High School handled an incident in the school which resulted in the death of one student.

President of the group, Angel Carbonu, criticised the authorities of St. Monica’s Senior High School in Mampong, over the death of a female student.

According to a news reports, the deceased was denied an exeat to go to the hospital by a house mistress, resulting in her untimely death.

The report stated that the unfortunate incident happened in May 2023 thus the management of the school is being investigated.

Angel Carbonu who has been devastated by the news, in an audio recording, furiously questioned why the management of the school could act in such a manner by denying a sick girl the access of going to the hospital for treatment.

He said “A girl falls sick and comes for exeat to go to the hospital, the girl is shown to the house staff. And the girl was denied exeat, leading to the death of this girl. Now people are threatening brimstone against the Ghana Education Service, teachers are being insulted left-right, and center on local radio stations, and so on and so forth.

“My colleagues, sometimes I don’t know what is wrong with us the teachers, drawing onto ourselves, problems, and challenges that no one compensates us for. If a student is sick, and there is evidence that the student is sick, and the student comes to you for an exeat, what on earth do you benefit from refusing an exeat for the student to go to the hospital? What do you stand to gain as a teacher for refusing to give exeat to a student to go to the hospital?”

Angel Carbonu further explained that the issue of students being denied exeat to go for treatment or treat other important matters has been going on for a while and it must come to a halt.

He also argued that teachers are the cause of their own troubles, adding that when they feel they are being overburdened by a lot of responsibilities, they should quit and allow a responsible person to take over.

“We have reports where parents have come to the schools to take their own children home for this and that reason and school authorities will say I will not allow it. At the end of the day, when there is a problem, you want all of us to share the problem. How much are you being compensated for, for a job that is unnecessarily done by you? That people don’t even recognize? The story in Mampong is a very sad one. An innocent girl lost her life just because a house mistress refused to do her duty.

“How can you say it’s not time for exeat and therefore whether you are sick or not, dying or not, I’m not going to give you exeat? Colleague teachers, sometimes we attract ourselves into invectives and negative expressions people make against us. If you feel that the housemistress job is too much for you, you can resign. There’s no need for this girl to die at St. Monica’s SHS at all,” he pointed out.

President of the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), Angel Carbonu, has bemoaned the rate of poverty among public sector workers.

He contends that while it is assumed that public sector workers take the largest chunk of government’s internally generated revenue, “the fact of the matter is that majority of public sector workers are impoverished in this country.”

He was speaking on the recent Ghana Statistical Service report which had revealed that more than 80% of public sector workers earn less than 3,000 cedis, with the lowest salary being 418 cedis.

According to Angel Carbonu, successive governments have refused to address the huge salary disparity in the public sector, and have rather pitted Ghanaians against the sector whenever there are demands for higher wages.

“We’ve even made demands from government that whenever government makes a statement that public sector workers are taking this percentage of internally generated revenue, then we tell government ‘ok, let’s sit down, let’s disaggregate them into portions, and let’s see who actually in terms of numbers takes the huge quantum of the amount of the internally generated revenue, who actually takes what home and who is actually taking the bigger chunk of the pie,’” he said on JoyNews’ PM Express.

He said when the breakdown is finally done, it would most likely be discovered that political appointees take quite a considerable chunk of the government’s fund as compared to the public sector worker.

“For us, let us even see how much from the government kitty goes to these people and compare it to the public servant or the civil servant who has been working for the past 20 to 30 years and find out how much he or she also takes home, then you’ll begin to see the unfairness in how we dish out monies to people as compensation for work that they’ve done or work that they have not done.

“This argument is always raised whenever government seems to excite the sympathy of the public to indicate that ‘o they’re taking this huge percentage of our internally generated revenue every year, therefore when they come to make demands, tell them they’re not entitled to what they make.’” he said.

According to him, till the issue is appropriately addressed public sector workers will remain impoverished.

“At the end of the day, the statistics show that public sector workers are taking huge chunk of the revenue, the fact of the matter is that majority of public sector workers are impoverished in this country,” he concluded.

Source: myjoyonline