Lecturers at the University for Development Studies, Tamale, have joined five other public universities to vote against the decision of the National Executive Committee of the University Teachers Association (UTAG) to suspend the Association's nationwide strike.

In a release on Friday evening, February 25, 249 lecturers voted against the suspension of the strike, while 53 lecturers voted in support of the suspension of the industrial action.

This means lecturers from six out of seven public universities, have so far voted against the resumption of academic work, across public universities.

Meanwhile, majority of lecturers across some six other public universities in the country, have also voted against the decision by the National Executive Committee (NEC), of the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG), to suspend its nationwide strike.

The dissenting lecturers include lectures from the University of Education, Winneba (UEW); the University of Ghana, Legon; the University of Energy and Natural Resources (UENR); the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and the University for Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA).

According to the votes collated from these six public universities, an overwhelming majority of the lecturers do not want UTAG to suspend its nationwide strike.

At the University of Education, Winneba, 68 lecturers voted against the suspension of the strike, while 60 lecturers accepted the suspension of the strike by the the National Executive Committee of UTAG.

At the nation’s premier university, the University of Ghana, 596 lecturers voted against the suspension, while 127 voted to accept the suspension of the strike.

147 lecturers at the University of Energy and Natural Resources voted against the suspension, while 63 voted in favour of the suspension of the strike. At the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), 654 lecturers voted against the suspension of the strike, while 211 voted in favour of same.

Finally, at the University of Professional Studies in Accra, 107 lecturers voted against the suspension of the strike, while 63 voted in support of the suspension.

However, at the University of Health and Allied Sciences, 85 lecturers voted in support of the suspension of the strike, whiles, 39 of the them rejected the suspension of the strike.

An aggregation of the votes then revealed that, 73.5% of lecturers are against the decision by the National Executive Committee of UTAG to suspend the strike which has lasted for over six weeks.

The University of Cape Coast and other member institutions are yet to cast their votes on NEC’s decision.

However, spokesperson for the Education Ministry, Kwasi Kwarteng, says the decision of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) to suspend their strike still holds, despite the rejection of same by some chapters.

Speaking in an interview on Prime Morning on Thursday, February 24, Kwasi Kwarteng explained that “for there to be a reverse decision, NEC will have to vote in a different way where majority will say ‘we are no longer suspending the strike’”.

“You may disagree with the decision of NEC and that is what the University of Ghana and the University of Education, Winneba demonstrated during their votes but it really does not nullify the decision of NEC”, he told Prime Morning Host, Emefa Adeti.

“If you look at the structure of UTAG, vis-à-vis their NEC being the final decision making body of the union, what happens is that when NEC makes a decision, the majority decision is binding. You have about 15 UTAG institutions, what we needed to make a very concrete decision is a majority decision of 8 of them”, he stated.

Amidst the ongoing voting process, lecturers at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST); the University of Cape Coast (UCC); the University of Development Studies (UDS); the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ) and the University of Ghana, Legon are set to begin academic work on Monday, February 28.