UTAG President Prof. Vera Ogeh Fiador says differences in remuneration between university staff groups do not automatically amount to discrimination, arguing pay should reflect qualifications, responsibilities and risk.
Speaking on the Asaase Breakfast Show on Tuesday, the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) president said academics and administrators perform different functions and should not necessarily have identical pay structures. “We do not have to compare apples and oranges,” she said.
Fiador said entry into a lecturing career requires a PhD, and academics face publication and progression requirements that can cost them their jobs if unmet, a career risk she said justifies a separate risk premium in academic pay. She said allowances can differ because they compensate for different aspects of a role: an academic’s premium may reflect that career risk, while an administrator’s could reflect the responsibility tied to a specific position.
She cautioned against comparing individual components of pay packages in isolation, saying the full compensation structure should be weighed instead. Fiador said UTAG has no objection to the Ghana Association of University Administrators (GAUA) seeking better conditions for its members, but objects to comparisons framed against UTAG’s own package, arguing GAUA should build its case on the value and responsibilities of administrative work rather than use UTAG’s remuneration as a benchmark.
Her remarks echo a UTAG statement issued Monday describing the disparity claims as misleading, saying a pay gap on its own is not evidence of discrimination and that Market Premiums should rest on objective, defensible criteria such as the complexity of work and external labour-market competitiveness. The statement added that public universities employ professionals across varied fields, including academics, administrators, accountants, auditors, librarians, legal officers and technicians, each with different qualifications and labour market pressures.
The exchange follows GAUA’s decision to reactivate a suspended strike over what it says are pay disparities between teaching and non-teaching senior staff. Fiador, a professor of finance at the University of Ghana Business School and Ghana’s first female full professor of finance, became UTAG’s first female president in September 2025.
