The immediate family of a basic education teacher in Saboba District in the Northern region Matthias Ngbapoan aka Ras Matthias are accusing the Ghana Education Service (GES) Directorate in the district of causing the death of their late brother.
According to the family, the teacher whose monthly salary was blocked for the past eight months had his last breath at the Assemblies of God (AG) hospital where he was rushed to for medical care.
They explained that since the GES placed an embargo on the salary of their brother, the family of four including his wife could barely feed but resorted to begging for alms to make a living.
The deceased family indicated that the late teacher had sent several delegations to GES to have them rescind their decision after he had exhausted internal mechanisms by sending letters upon letters to get his salary reinstated but was not given the necessary attention leading to his shocking demise.
They opined that their beloved son and brother died as a result of frustration and inhumane treatment meted out to him by the Saboba District Education Service Directorate.
It was also disclosed that the GES directorate in Saboba had accused the deceased teacher of unpunctuality to school after the late disabled teacher had no means of transportation to make it post.
A closed source within the family said his beloved brother suffered a heart attack and was rushed to AG hospital in Saboba and was placed on oxygen after the medical practitioners realised he was facing breathing difficulties but he could not make it.
“He has not been paid for several months now, with reasons that he wasn’t punctual to school. He was an abled person living with disability and was posted to a far distance which was not accessible to him and several appeals to the directorate to consider posting him in town proved unsuccessful,” he recounted.
He narrated how the deceased teacher had liaised with some of his co-workers to use their payslips to guarantee loans for him to pay back should the salary come and the people were now on his neck to repay the loans.
The action of GES caused our brother to now rely on the support of family and friends for survival until his death. Meanwhile, those he liaises with to get loans have also been chasing him for their money causing persistent financial embarrassment to him, a family retorted.
In the revised code of conduct of the Staff of Ghana Education Service (GES) published in 2017, chapter 3 section 30 of the code of conduct is against financial embarrassment of its staff.
According to the code, “financial embarrassment impairs the efficiency of a staff and may result in disciplinary proceedings being taken against him/her. And it is the duty of the head of the institution to report to the Director General through the appropriate channel any staff serving under him/her who to his/her knowledge is in persistent financial embarrassment.”
