All Teachers Alliance Ghana (ATAG) has expressed disagreement over the decision of the Ghana Education Services (GES), to continually deduct 30 percent as laptop fees from their Professional Development Allowances.

The ATAG strongly rejects the move by the GES to forcefully tax them “without recourse to court proceedings on the stay of distributing and deduction of teacher’s allowance.”

The General Secretary of the ATAG, Albert Dadson Amoah speaking at a media briefing in Accra this week, said the group is up in arms against the education regulatory body because the procurement for the purchase of the laptops lacks transparency.

 According to him, the deliberate attempt by the government to continually deduct monies from the teachers’ allowance is questionable.

He said the group will pour out its frustration on the GES because there is a court decision that bars the Service from further deducting fees from the salaries and allowance for the payment of the said laptops.

“We are going to file contempt charges at the court against the Ghana Education Service and the other defendants. Why are they deducting monies and forcing teachers to buy the laptops?” he laments.

 Mr Amoah concerns were that the GES failed to properly engage them on the procurement of the laptops and the most painful aspect of the issue at hand, was that the laptops are of lower quality.

“What is more worrying is the fact that certain questions surrounding the sole sourcing procurement as well as the quality of the laptops are yet to be answered fully by the Ghana Education Service and the Ministry of Education,” he opined.

He added that the teachers feel very insulted with the position taken by the government and GES to resort to a local company with no track records in the manufacturing of laptops.

“We wrote to the Ghana Standards Authority [to] ask whether it has certified the TMI laptops being distributed. They responded by saying [that] the company has not applied to the Ghana Standards Authority for certification or quality evaluation for its laptops.

“We wrote to the Registrar General and requested for the names of the Directors and Secretary of K.A Technologies,” he worriedly stated.

The government, in collaboration with teachers’ unions, started the distribution of laptops to all teachers in public schools from September this year, under the title “One-teacher, one-laptop.”

Under this arrangement, teachers were expected to stomach 30 percent of the total cost of the laptop, while the government shoulders the rest (70 percent).

The teachers’ unions have come out in their numbers to kick against the cost-sharing module that the government is seeking.

By Akutu Dede Adimer