The Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU) and the Technical University Teachers Association of Ghana (TUTAG) have called on the government to address outstanding issues in order to ensure industrial harmony on the labour front.

While members of TEWU-TUC have given the government a two-week ultimatum, effective August 14, 2026 for the government to address its grievances, TUTAG, on the other hand, gave the government until August 31, 2026, to settle salaries and legitimate allowances owed to members serving under approved post-retirement contracts.

Both TEWU-TUC and TUTAG gave the ultimatums at separate press conferences in Accra last week Thursday.

For instance, members of TEWU-TUC are demanding equal and fair treatment of its members across the education sector and demanded fairness in promotion, remuneration, annual leave, health care, general welfare, professional development and access to opportunities.

“By this statement, we are serving two weeks’ notice, effective today, August 14, 2026, on the various stakeholders (the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Education, Ghana Tertiary Education Commission, university managements, Ghana Education Service (GES) management etc) to address our concerns accordingly.

“Failure to address the above issues will compel members of TEWU to advise themselves accordingly,” the Deputy General Secretary of TEWU of TUC, Gifty Abena Turkson, said at a press conference in Accra on Friday, August 14,2026.

She said TEWU of TUC was demanding the prompt payment of all outstanding overtime allowances owed to watchmen and security personnel in the GES that had accrued over the years.

That category of staff, she said, worked tirelessly on weekends and public holidays to keep educational institutions functioning, often at the expense of their social lives yet, the remuneration needed to compensate them for their sacrifices had not been paid.

TEWU of TUC, she said, also demanded the introduction and immediate payment of responsibility allowances to unit heads who performed additional supervisory and administrative duties in the GES.

For its part, TUTAG said some of affected staff had gone for more than 24 months without receiving their salaries, despite continuing to teach, supervise academic work and performed other professional duties under their approved contracts.

The association said the prolonged non-payment had become a system-wide issue requiring urgent and coordinated intervention by the government and relevant state institutions.

It warned that failure to resolve the matter by the deadline could result in the activation of lawful industrial, administrative and legal processes to protect the interests and rights of the affected members.

The development could also have implications for academic activities at the affected technical universities, including student supervision, project and thesis completion and graduation schedules, if the situation remained unresolved.

As part of its response to the unresolved payment issue, TUTAG directed its members to wear red bands from August 14 to August 31, 2026.

The President of TUTAG, Prof. Deodat Emilson Adenutsi, told the press that the association would no longer accept what he described as endless procedural redirection over the payment of its members.

He said TUTAG had exhausted its diplomatic and administrative engagements with the relevant institutions and had submitted details of affected staff to facilitate the payment process.