The General Secretary of the National Association of Teachers (GNAT), Thomas Tanko Musah has stressed that the association will not back down on its agreement with the government for their pensions to be exempted from any debt restructuring programme.

Mr. Musah said members of the association are not aware of any intentions of the government to introduce an alternative offer that will allow trustees to include pension funds in the government’s debt restructuring programme.

The Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta in a letter urged the Board of Trustees of pensions funds to allow for such funds to be included in the government’s new proposed debt restructuring offer following a series of engagements.

But speaking in an interview on Eyewitness News on Citi FM, Mr Musah said there needs to be a distinction between organized labour and the various schemes that make up organized labour so as not to mistake utterances by a scheme to mean the position of organized labour.

“Two quick things must be placed on record; a distinction between organized labour and individual schemes. For example, if a union leader is invited to go and have negotiations or discussions with the government, that union leader went there not on behalf of organized labour but went there on the back of his scheme, and to the best of my knowledge, organized labour has never had any engagements with the committee regarding any haircut or a second round of negotiations and so the individuals that went to engage the committee went there in the name of their scheme and cannot speak for organized labour”.

“When the person goes there in the name of their scheme, the person cannot speak for organized labour because the agreement we have is between the government and organized labour so to that extent, no individual can go there and have discussions on behalf of organized labour without recourse to the very body that took the decision.”