…says teachers’ package “very superior” to other Public Servants’
As the two-week teachers’ strike enters the fourth day, Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister Anil Nandlall, S.C., is of the view that the industrial action is politically motivated. 
The Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) has planned a strike action from February 5 to 16, 2024 – a move which the Government has deemed “illegal”.
Speaking on the matter during his weekly programme – Issues in the News, Nandlall pointed out that while the right to strike is fundamental and guaranteed by the Constitution, there must have a basis to strike.
“These [industrial] actions must be based on good faith and not be driven by politics or other ulterior motives. The main protagonist in this strike is a politician – [GTU General Secretary] Coretta McDonald, an APNU/AFC [Opposition] Member of Parliament… She is giving political commentary all day on the social media about the strike so there is no doubt, in my view, that the strike is politically driven,” the minister contended.
This, according to Nandlall, is even more blatant given the fact that all of the Opposition’s politicians are also supporting and pushing the strike. “There is no doubt that there is complicity between the union and the Opposition,” he added.
The GTU has initiated the two-week strike action over what it claimed was Government’s failure to address proposals in a Multi-Year Agreement submitted by the Union for better working conditions for teachers.
However, the Attorney General argued that Government and the union are in discussions over those proposals and had engagements only last week on the several issues that were not addressed out of the 41 demands proposed to the Education Ministry.
No breakdown
Over the past three years, the Education Ministry said it has has fulfilled 25 of the Union’s requests and of the 16 proposals remaining, two are specifically for the benefit only GTU and its Executive Members, and two others are contrary to the laws of Guyana.
The areas in which the ministry and the union have not reached an agreement include: salary increases for some scales (MOE has gone above GTU’s request for some scales), allowances, rehired teachers paid at the scale that they retired at, housing fund (which the Union has repeatedly failed to give a way forward for although the fund has a few hundred million dollars put there by the Government) and salary scales for different Heads of Departments and Sixth Form Deputy Heads, payment for the marking of SBAs and house lots for teachers in each new housing scheme.
Moreover, the ministry said 12 unresolved issues are currently being examined for their practical implementation and sustainability.
“There was no known breakdown of the talks [between the ministry and the Union], and then out of the blue the strike action arose,” the Attorney General posited.
Referencing demands for better pay, Minister Nandlall argued that the current Administration has already adjusted the salary scale of some categories of teachers. For instance, he noted that they raised the salary of trainee teachers from $12,466 in 2019 to now $104,000 – a $91,537 increase. Similarly, trained graduate teachers are now taking home $237,736.
Additionally, he pointed to all the other perks that teachers enjoy such as extended holidays when schools are closed as well as duty-free concessions. In fact, only recently, the government announced a new regime for duty-free qualifications whereby teachers nearing retirement age would be qualified for this concession even if they are not to the levels of senior headmistress or headmaster.
AG Nandlall contended that the renumeration of teachers cannot be looked at in isolation but in comparison with other public servants.
“You gotta compare it with rest of public service employees and tell me… that there is not another motive at play here. It cannot be [working] conditions because these conditions when you compared with the other public sector employees, they’re quite frankly superior – very superior… Don’t look at it in isolation, compare it with other public sector employees,” Nandlall asserted.
Illegal
Meanwhile, the Education Ministry has already described the strike as illegal and has adopted a recommendation from the Labour Ministry not to pay the teachers who do not turn out to work. In addition, the Education Ministry has also indicated to the GTU that it would stop deducting dues from the wages and salaries of teachers on behalf of the union. This means the union would now have to collect its fees directly from teachers.
Education Minister, Priya Manickchand, on Monday evening had stated that government is not obligated to agree to the multi-year agreement proposed by GTU but still went ahead to meet more than half of those demands.
She pointed out that while the GTU has proposed a 25 per cent salary increase for 2019 and a 20 per cent increase for every other year from 2020 to 2023, Government has increased teachers’ salaries by more than 20 per cent since taking office in 2020.
“We had this problem where teachers were getting the wrong salary, and [President Dr Irfaan Ali] said no, we will fix all of that from 2020 to now, so, people were backdated. Last year October, we fixed it and it cost us $700 million to fix that,” Manickchand stated.
In addition, she noted that the Education Ministry will be pumping $1.8 billion in school supplies and cash grants to teachers in 2024 to assist them with the preparation of their classrooms. In fact, the distribution of this School’s Supplies Cash Grant started on Monday in Region Two and has so far been disbursed to schools in Regions Three, Four, Five and Six. Distributions are ongoing in the other regions.
Nevertheless, even as the GTU-organised strike continues, the Education Ministry has assured parents that provisions have been made to ensure students are academically engaged via the learning platforms. Educational content across Grades and particularly for exam classes, is available on the Ministry of Education’s website, the Guyana Learning Channel (television and Youtube channel), and the recently launched app, EDPal as well as on the radio, EdYou FM. (G8)
