A lecturer who once taught at the University of Ghana, Dr. Sulemana Idrissa, has shared how he earned more as a student than he made teaching in the country.
University teachers have been on an indefinite strike since January 10, this year, demanding better service conditions.
Speaking to JoyNews, Dr. Idrissa described the uncomfortable situation he found himself in as a lecturer at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) at the time.
“At GIMPA, even my office had no air-conditioning. I complained to everyone I could complain to, and people thought it was a luxury for a lecturer to have an air-condition in his office,” he said.
He further explained that when he moved to the UG, he came to the realization that what he was being paid was less than he earned as a student in the United States of America.
“By the time I came to Legon, my salary was less than ¢5,000 a month. This means I earned so much more being a graduate student in the US than being a full-time lecturer in Ghana,” he said.
Commenting on the strike action announced by lecturers across the country, Dr. Sulemana Idrissa, who is now a banker in the US, said all they want is for the government to meet their demands for them to be able to survive.
“People are not asking for money to be millionaires. They just want to survive,” he said.
The indefinite strike by the University Teachers of Ghana (UTAG) entered 21 days on Monday, January 31, 2022, and by convention, schools should be shut down across the country after such a long time.
Should this happen, it would be second only to the last time such a time happened in the country in 1995.