The Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) and the Ministry of Education Monday differed sharply as to the response of teachers for them to participate in a general strike to press demands for increased salaries.
The GTU said that teachers from across the country heeded the call from the union, with GTU secretary general Coretta Mc Donald, saying “teachers are out today.
“They have downed tools. The majority of teachers have downed tools and that is an indication that this strike is not political; it is because teachers needs are not being met,” she added.
“We submitted a proposal since 2020 and this is 2024. But what we’ve recognised they’ve been doing over the years is that they’ve been pulling from the conditions we’ve been asking for, tweaking them and my good friend (the Chief Education Officer) Saddam Hussain is putting out all kinds of things suggesting that the GTU is asking for 41 things and they’ve already been satisfied 21 or 27 things, something like that,” McDonald told reporters.
But, Hussein said while an assessment of the strike impact was ongoing “from what I am seeing in front of the Ministry of Education and in Region Three, I am not seeing much of an impact.
“I am very happy that the teachers have made the right decision,” he said, adding that the Ministry of Education, through its network of education officers, would be collecting data from the ground.
Hussein said teachers were appreciative of the efforts that government has been making to improve their conditions and “they are going to make the right decision.
“In fact, I called a number of schools in Berbice where they had a hundred per cent turnout,” he said, noting that there was a “low turnout” at schools that are headed or managed by GTU members.
Hussain said there are 13,652 teachers in Guyana but GTU’s membership is less than 4,500.
But as they staged their protest, the teachers chanted and held placards that read, among other slogans, “Don’t expect excellence if you’re penny pinching”, “You expect excellence and leaving us penniless”, “Guyana shines at CXC, teachers pay like junkie”, Less pay, less work. Teachers ain’t no jerk”.
The teachers are also upset that for several years, their annual uniform allowances of GUY$8,000 (One GUY=US$0.004 cents) has stagnated while the annual allowance per child now stands at GUY$45,000.
“That cannot do anything. That cannot even buy shoes unless you go to a Chinese (store) and by the ti, an opposition legislator, dismissed government’s repeated claims that the industrial action was politically motivated.
“Teachers have needs. Teachers’ issues are not being met,” she said, questioning why strikes called by the People’s Progressive Party (PPP)-aligned Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) were not deemed political.
Last year, the government ignored repeated calls for collective bargaining and instead engaged a cross-section of teachers to hear their grievances and requests.
Senior Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh in a statement last December announced an across the board salary increase of 6.5 per cent that will benefit over 54,000 public servants, teachers, members of the disciplined services and government pensioners and will place an additional GUY$7.5 billion in disposable income annually in the hands of these employees.
Chief Labour Officer, Dhaneshwar Deonarine, said the grievance procedure has not been exhausted, and that he had declined the union’s request tfor the matter to go to arbitration as there was an attempt to breach the grievance procedure.
But GTU president, Dr Mark Lyte, accused the Chief Labour Officer of violating the grievance procedure by failing to call a conciliation meeting.
“When the job of the Chief Labour Officer was to bring the two sides at the table and then he can decipher whether there was any need for that.”
Lyte said the union would not negotiate for fraction of the teaching population, and the government has an obligation to meet with the bargaining agent regardless of its perceived political affiliation.
Source-CMC
