The leadership of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has appealed to its members to be patient and allow the leadership to see to the smooth migration to the single spine salary structure devoid of any distortions. According to the leadership, the seeming delay in getting the entire Ghana Education Service (GES) staff onto the single spine salary structure was due to salary distortions that were detected which the association want corrected before the migration. Mr Paul Apanga, the National President of GNAT, who made the call at a media interaction in Koforidua, urged members of GNAT to be patient as the leadership and the GES consulted to ensure the correction of all the distortions. "GNAT is of the view that in line with the position of organized labour, teachers stand to gain if the distortions are corrected before being rolled onto the spine, but it must be admitted however that in trying to clean up the distortions before the migration the likely scenario will be a delay in rolling GES staff onto the spine," he said. He said GES had put together a committee made up of GNAT, National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) and Tertiary Education Workers Union (TEWU) to deal with the harmonization of placements within the GES structure with the fair Wages and Salary Commission (FWSC). Mr Apanga said salary distortions of the GES was not the only factor delaying their migration to the new salary structure and that mapping of individual teachers on the format provided for the exercise had been difficult hence its delay in submission for validation by the FWSC. He said a consultant had been engaged by the GES to facilitate the exercise whiles the FWSC had also given a firm assurance that when the data was made available, it would be possible to migrate GES staff onto the single spine salary structure in January 2011. Mr Apanga assured members of GNAT that although the migration exercise was delaying, GNAT members and the entire GES staff were not losing out because what ever was agreed upon finally would take effect from January 1 2010 and arrears would be paid once the placement gave an increment. Source: GNA