Adu Asare Slams Media For Pitching UTAG Against Parliamentarians

The former Member of Parliament (MP) for the Adentan Constituency, Kojo Adu Asare has lashed out at the media for what he describes as an “attempt to pitch one section of the labour front against the politicians, particularly, Article 71 office holders”.

The former Lawmaker made this strong critic of the Ghanaian Media in reference to the assertion by the former MP for Asokwa, Maxwell Kofi Jumah who categorically stated that in “terms of hierarchy, the teacher is not level pegging with the Member of Parliament (MP)”.

According to Hon. Adu Asare, it was unethical for that comment to be attributed to all MPs because Kofi Jumah was not speaking on behalf of MPs.

“The person was expressing an opinion and if the whole of the discussion is made to suggest that MPs feel they are higher than teachers, then I think we got it all wrong. That is where the media seem to be driving the issue and I think it is a very unfortunate situation,” he lamented.

The former representative of the people of Adentan in Parliament was speaking as a panelist on the ‘Big Issues’ on Citi FM, during the discussion of seemingly unending industrial strike actions by various labour unions.

What has therefore heightened the discussion is the over GHC 200,000 ex-gratia given to each MP of the fifth Parliament, in the midst of agitations by teachers’ unions; the latest being the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) after the National Association of Graduate Teachers(NAGRAT) and the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) a few weeks ago, with the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) and the Government Hospital Pharmacists currently on strike.

The former legislator insisted that, he has a lot of respect for the teaching profession and therefore finds it mischievous for the media to push an agenda that seeks to suggest that Parliamentarians are looking down on teachers or their profession.

“I sitting here, I have three of my siblings as teachers…my niece is a teacher and some of them have even taught at one point or the other, even though they ended up in other professions. So there is a lot of respect that I have for teachers,” he intimated.

Hon. Kojo Adu Asare further called for a dispassionate approach to the discussion of topics of National interest such as these, rather than to “create a front that we all end up regretting for the kind of approach given to the issue”.