Technical Universities Likely To Extend Academic Calendar By Three Weeks

Technical Universities across the country are looking to extend their academic calendars by three weeks as make-up for the period that their lecturers had been on strike.

Chairman of the Chancellors of Technical Universities Ghana, Rev. Prof. John Frank Eshun, today told Accra based Citi FM that the extension is an unpalatable necessity that is needed to enable lecturers and students cover lost ground.

“I believe the various academic Boards will meet and then reconsider and then extend the semester to. That is what is done, normally, it is a lost period and that lost period must be accounted for.”

The extension will likely inconvenience a lot of students, including foreign ones schooling in Ghana, who will now have to scuttle their schedules by three more weeks.

Striking Technical Universities lecturers, yesterday evening called off their three-week-old strike after meeting with the National Labor Commission (NLC) and other stakeholders.

The Technical Universities Teachers Association of Ghana (TUTAG) had declared the nationwide strike to press home demand for the migration of Technical University lecturers to the pay grade of their counterparts in the mainstream universities.

The government had initially refused to give in to the lecturers’ demands, before eventually proposing to pay the lecturers’ entertainment and responsibility allowances. The lecturers, however, rejected the offer and stuck to their guns. Yesterday, they ended the strike after meeting with the NLC and securing some concessions