Invigilators threaten to boycott BECE over allowances

 

Invigilators in the Bongo District in the Upper East Region, are threatening to boycott the invigilation of the ongoing Basic Education Certificate Examination(BECE) over the non-payment of allowance by the Ghana Education Service.

The invigilators, numbering over 27, accused the GES of refusing to pay them their supervision allowances for last year’s BECE, hence the decision to boycott invigilation by Thursday, if the allowances are not paid.

“Every year when we invigilate, we are supposed to be paid some allowances by both West Africa Examination Council(WAEC) and Ghana Education Service(GES),”Mr. Joshua Ayintara, an affected invigilator said.

“For the past two years, it hasn’t been easy getting our allowance. We had to threaten to boycott invigilation but we were paid in 2014. But for 2015 and with this ongoing BECE, we have not been paid. So we called one Mr. Ayitey, a coordinator of exams at GES who told us we were being difficult and that made us angry.”

“So we threatened to boycott the invigilation and delayed the integrated science paper by 2 hours 30 minutes. Instead of starting at 9:00am and ending at 11:00am, we started at 9:45am and ended at 12:45pm after several appeals by the DCE and senior officials of the GES in the region” he added.

Mr. Ayintara reiterated that if by Thursday their allowances are not paid, they will boycott the supervision of the exams.

“We should have some good news from government because almost everybody is angry about what is happening. We have resolved that we will boycott the examination centers to invigilate the exams if we don’t get our money. It might be Thursday or Friday” Ayintara noted.

He said although they do not know how much they are to be paid as allowances, they cannot understand why the Ghana Education Service does not want to pay them.

Mr. Ayintara noted that, the situation was not only peculiar to the Bongo District and that the Bolgatanga Municipality and other areas had similar issues.

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