Court dismisses case against arrested unemployed trainee teachers  by Ellen Dapaah  

Some graduate teachers who were arrested for unlawful picketing at the Ghana Education Service (GES) headquarters say they are at a crossroad over their postings as no official communication has been received from authorities.

The 19 teachers were arrested in January 2020 and sent to court for unlawfully picketing to demand postings.

The case was subsequently referred to an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) centre.

The Public Relations Officer of the group, Emmanuel Asabre, speaking to Citi News said they are yet to receive information about their postings.

“Ghana Education Service was trying to pin the whole arrest on the Ghana Police Service and they were also making it clear that they are not the people having a case with us but rather, GES. So if GES is not showing up in court, there’s nothing they can do. As it stands now, we don’t know the way forward. We are just looking up to court. They don’t have any information or lead as to where the case is going so we hadn’t had any information from them,” he said.

Meanwhile, the lawyer for the graduate teachers, Bede Tukuu says the court struck out the case after the Ghana Education Service failed to show up as complainants during the alternative dispute resolution meeting.

“The case was struck out from the court. Nobody came up as the complainant. So the matter was referred back to the court since no complainant has given a statement to the police and the police cannot be a prosecutor and complainant at the same time. The police record they presented had the police as the complainant. When the police were invited as the complainant at the ADR, they said they cannot take part because they cannot be the complainant and prosecute at the same time. They only acted on the call at GES to go and pick them up. So the case was referred back to the court and the judge said since there was no complainant before the court, she struck out the case.”

Background

On January 9th 2020, some graduate trainee teachers representing over 3,000 teacher trainees picketed at the Ghana Education Service (GES) to demand postings.

The teachers who completed the various Colleges of Education in 2018 accused the GES of not posting them despite the completion of their mandatory national service and licensure certification.

But 19 leaders of the teacher trainees were arrested by the Ministries Police Command for unlawful picketing at the GES headquarters.