Employment Minister reveals cause of delays in unpaid teachers’ salaries
Employment Minister reveals cause of delays in unpaid teachers’ salaries
The Minister for Employment and Labour Relations, Dr. Abdul-Rashid Pelpuo, has attributed the ongoing salary delays affecting thousands of nurses, teachers, and junior doctors to what he described as “poor recruitment practices and fiscal indiscipline” under the former Akufo-Addo-Bawumia administration.
His remarks follow days of protests by frustrated health and education workers who claim to have worked for up to ten months without receiving their salaries. The Junior Doctors’ Association has also threatened to suspend its services if the government fails to clear the arrears soon.
Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on Wednesday, October 8, 2025, Dr. Pelpuo acknowledged that the situation was “unfair” but insisted it was an inherited problem. “The situation is currently unfair, but it is a culmination of events that took place in the last regime before the current regime took over,” he said.
He explained that the former government recruited over 12,000 people into the public sector after losing the 2024 general elections, without securing the necessary financial clearance to pay them. “People were engaged to work without due process. For you to work and be paid, you need clearance to show that there is money in the account and that your employment has been approved. That didn’t happen in this respect,” he stated.
Dr. Pelpuo further revealed that the three-month transitional budget handed over to the Mahama administration did not include allocations to cater for these new recruits, thereby worsening the fiscal pressure on the current government. “Over 12,000 people were engaged at the time the last administration had lost the elections. Where did they think the money would have come from?” he questioned.
Despite the difficulties, the Minister assured affected workers that the government was working diligently to address the situation. “We are taking it up very seriously, and I can assure the nurses, teachers, and junior doctors who are caught up in the process that we are going to respond to them before the end of the year,” Dr. Pelpuo said.
He reaffirmed the government’s commitment to ensuring fairness and restoring confidence in the public sector, emphasizing that proper recruitment procedures and financial discipline would be strictly enforced going forward.
