Government has appealed to striking University Lecturers to accept the payment of the arrears for their allowances for 2012 in installments as it cannot give them the preferential treatment they are seeking.
The members of the University Teachers Association (UTAG) in a meeting with the Chief of Staff at the presidency and the vice-chancellors of the various public universities in the country failed to reach a compromise concerning the mode of payment of their money.
The lecturers are demanding full payment of the money which according to them, has unduly been delayed more than a year since they withdrawn their services and have embarked on an industrial action.
Speaking on an Accra based radio station, Joy FM on Thursday, the Information and Media Relations Minister; Mahama Ayariga insisted that the lecturers should reconsider their position on the matter.
“We are not disputing that we will pay; we are just asking to pay according to a certain schedule…and so we will continue to urge them to reconsider their position,” he said.
According to him, government strongly believes that the country has not reached a point “where all public universities should be closed down not on account of failure to pay salaries, not on account over a dispute of how much they should pay as salaries but on account of something that we’ve all agreed on except that we are asking for a certain time frame to be able to pay.”
Mr. Ayariga indicated that the government cannot pick one union out of the lot and pay their arrears in full because it will distort government’s projected cash flow.