…Teachers’ just demands
Well, this year’s sturm and drang of the GTU’s demand for “living wage” for teachers is over…and sadly, it ended not with a bang, but with a whimper! Starting from their demand for a 40 per cent increase in 2016 and just as hefty increases for subsequent years, the GTU justified the numbers by demonstrating that teachers were just unable to live in dignity under the present salary scales. They persuaded both of the umbrella Trade Union bodies, the Opposition and most Guyanese about the justness of their cause.
So when the terms they accepted were announced, your Eyewitness was flummoxed, to say the least. Way back in the day, he’d said a fix was in the works, and after the pantomime of pouting and prancing in the streets, the GTU and the Government would kiss and make up – with the Government getting its way, of course. His rationale was that teachers were by and large supporters of the PNC-led Government and neither side would want to go into the LGE with such a large bloc of supporters pissed off! Then again, old heads in the GTU would know that the PNC always played hardball when their insistence on absolute power was threatened. Accusations that the GTU President was “PPP” surfaced, and victimisation reared its ugly head.
But as the standoff progressed, your Eyewitness started to have some hopes that, with the widespread support, the GTU would grow a pair of cojones to stand up for their justified demand. The country is on the cusp of finally getting some real money to make the quantum leap out of grubbing for a living – but it would all depend on getting our next generation educated. Or we could end up like Venezuela, with all the oil in the world but nobody to translate that into real development.
But here it was, from a demand of 40 per cent for the base year 2016, the GTU accepted 12 per cent!!! What is going on?? How is this salary scale going to encourage bright young people to enter the teaching profession to gradually transform the modalities of education delivery for the demands of the 21st century?? Junior teachers with starting salaries of $61,000 would now get an increase of $7,320 for 2016; taking their salaries to $68,320; and a further eight per cent ($5,465) for 2018, which would take their salaries to $73,785. What will be left for them after NIS and taxes??
If it took a 50 per cent increase in just-appointed Ministers’ salaries – from a base of $347,000! — to encourage them to do their job and not be seduced by corruption, how is a new teacher at $73,785 to be encouraged not to be a slacker?
This whole “deal” stinks to high heavens!!
…or debunching?
Now that the GTU’s thrown in the towel, your Eyewitness can discuss this term “debunching”, which always crops up when teachers negotiate for salaries. He must admit he hadn’t the faintest clue what they were talking about! So he did what he does in these matters: hit his “Google” search button!! And lo and behold, this in the ONLY entry that came up:
“The process or phenomenon by which a beam of electrons or other particles in a vacuum tube or particle accelerator tends to become more dispersed (laterally and longitudinally) as it travels.” Now your Eyewitness knew teachers couldn’t be demanding electron dispersion, so he looked further! Nothing, save specific mentions in the Guyanese newspaper on the very same teachers’ demands! And after much digging and scratching he found this:
“Teachers who have been in the system for years receiving the same salary of a teacher of the same status, who has recently joined the profession. Hence, the implementation of the “debunching” payments, whereby teachers would be allocated according to qualifications.”
Guyanese invented a word!!
…the health profession
With understaffing at all levels in the health system, is the Government serious about encouraging “export” of public health workers to increase remittances??
