Suspension of post-retirement contract is counterproductive to academia – Dr. Zaato

Senior Lecturer at the University of Ghana and Policy Analyst, Dr. Joshua Jebuntie Zaato has expressed dissatisfaction over the recent decision by President Mahama to suspend post-retirement contract appointments for retired public service staff across the country.

A letter issued on April 2 by the Secretary to the President, Dr. Callistus Mahama announced an immediate halt to the granting of such appointments.

Commenting on the matter, Dr. Zaato made a case for public service staff in academia, arguing that the decision is counterproductive to the academic field.

He argued that the nature of academia particularly promotion from a lecturer to Associate Professor and Professor takes a longer time by which individuals may have reached retirement age.

Speaking on TV3 New Day’s Big Issue, Wednesday, April 9, 2025, he explained at that retirement age is when they had acquired all the knowledge to disseminate to the younger generation, hence terminating post-retirement contract will be counterproductive.

“Within academia by the time you are a full professor, you have retired. These are the people supervising PHD’s, these are the people supervising MPhil, in fact in almost all academic institutions you will see that they will move all the professors to teach at the Master’s and PhD level and will allow lecturers and Senior lecturers to handle the undergrad level.

“So what this directive basically does is that, all these people you will train them and by the time that the person becomes a university recognised academia in this field, he is going home.

“My point is that this policy is counterproductive. I’m surprised UTAG is quiet about this. I’m surprised that so far I have not seen UTAG come out (to speak). I am talking about my academia where I am because I don’t want to go to other places,”.

According to Dr. Zaato, this policy by government is only a “knee-jerk” reaction and will not solve any problem.

“You are hurting that (academia) field. If you go to my department at Political Studies now, about 60 percent of the full Professors and Associate Professors are on retirement. So, I don’t know what happens with this directive. They are teaching courses right now, supervising PhDs right now so does that mean they should just go home?” he lamented.

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