Ghana Education News – Ghanaeducation.org |September 2021| Whiles the government is celebrating its achievement by distributing laptops to teachers under the One Teacher One Laptop initiative, teacher unions at the Pre-tertiary Education level are not excited about the initiative.
The unions believe the laptops being handed over to teachers are of low quality. They believe the government’s decision to launch the One Teacher One Laptop for the entire world to see worsens the case giving the low-quality nature of the laptops.
According to the unions, the launching of the event is high patronizing and totally disrespectful to teachers by the government of the day.
Innovative Teachers and All Teachers Alliance Ghana (ATAG) argued their stands in a petition they laid before the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) in March 2021 which seemed to have been ignored by the government and the powers that be.
The unions in said “The act by the government “is highly patronizing and grossly disrespectful for government to give laptops of low quality to teachers as if teachers are so poor that we cannot afford quality laptops as our personal assets
The unions have argued that the government should have gone for laptops from renowned brands such as Lenovo and Toshiba among others for teachers. The unions have described the One Teacher One Laptop brand as crap and one that does not befit the Ghanaian teacher.
They furthered that, the government must distribute the laptops to teachers for free since the government is to provide tools for teachers to work with and not to sell the tools to them.
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They have also called on (CHRAJ) to investigate the procurement processes that were followed in procuring the laptops for teachers.
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In an interview with the leadership of the Innovative Teachers, they indicated that they will continue to pursue the matter and had served the (CHRAJ) with their petition whiles their lawyers had written to CHRAG to request that, their members are not forced to take up the laptops nor should any deductions be charged against the salaries or professional development allowance of its members.
Source: Ghanaeducation.org