The Coalition of Unemployed Trained Teachers has voiced significant disappointment regarding the government’s recent recruitment drive for 7,000 educators, citing fundamental flaws in the application process.
National Organiser Paul Kakari expressed the group’s collective frustration following revelations that the recruitment portal was prematurely shut down after receiving 40,000 applications for a mere 7,000 vacancies.
Mr Kakari argued that it would have been more prudent for officials to categorise recruitment by graduation year, prioritising long-term unemployed cohorts before considering recent graduates.
This backlash follows a statement from the Education Minister, Haruna Iddrisu, who confirmed that the portal was overwhelmed by more than 40,000 applicants. Speaking at the e-Learning Africa launch, the minister acknowledged that while Ghana faces a deficit of approximately 50,000 teachers, the Ministry of Finance only granted financial clearance for a small fraction of that requirement due to strict budgetary constraints.
To avoid total system failure under the weight of such high demand, authorities chose to close the portal once the applicant pool became heavily oversubscribed.
Despite the minister’s assurances that the selection process would remain transparent and merit-based, Mr Kakari remains sceptical of the underlying criteria.
“The question we would want to ask is, what would be the criteria that authorities will use in the selection of the 7,000 teachers out of the 40,000 applications received? If the Ministry of Finance gave financial clearance for only 7,000 teachers to be recruited, why did they not limit the recruitment to the 2023-year batch? They should have done so because they are the seniormost, with over 13,000 of them without jobs. The process used meant that within 12 hours, over 90,000 people were competing, and only 40,000 managed to file their applications, with only 7,000 to be employed.”
Beyond the logistics, Mr Kakari raised concerns over the speed at which the portal was closed, noting it took less than 24 hours to shut out thousands of potential candidates.
He added that the current approach constitutes an unfair process, as the specific metrics for selecting the successful 7,000 candidates from the massive pool of applicants remain entirely undisclosed to the public.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana