Teachers’ remuneration will grow steadily– PPP GS affirms

– urges teachers to continue to work with Gov’t

The Government of Guyana is actively working to improve the working conditions of educators in Guyana, and the governing Peoples Progressive Party/Civic is assuring that the remuneration package for teachers would significantly be increased in the future.
These assurances have been given to the nation’s teachers by PPP General Secretary Dr Bharrat Jagdeo, who explained that there are on the horizon major plans to comprehensively improve the education sector, including making available training opportunities for teachers.
“We have major plans for the future (and) the remuneration will grow…We have to be balanced, but in the future, it [remuneration] will go up steeply,” Dr Jagdeo told reporters at Freedom House in Georgetown on Thursday.
He made these statements in response to questions raised by members of the media in regard to the state of affairs between the Ministry of Education (MoE) and the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU).

Politically driven
In February of this year, the GTU orchestrated an illegal strike, claiming that engagements on the proposed Multi-Year Agreement had broken down, even as 20 of the 41 requests they had made had been met by the MoE.
Consequently, Dr Jagdeo had expressed the view that the strike is politically driven, and had called attention to the Government’s many efforts to improve the welfare of hundreds of educators in the public system.
“We believe that it’s driven by Congress Place…This wouldn’t stretch your imagination to see that there is a political motive to this, because the head of the union is one of the most rabid members of the Opposition; who is extremist, racist, and is squatting on the (GTU) general secretary position,” he asserted.
Notably, the GTU is insisting that negotiations must surround retroactive pay increases for the period 2019-2023. The MoE has, however, made it clear that there is no fiscal space to cater for retroactive increases.
“They expect us now to adjust their wages for that period. We said it’s a non-starter; if we do that, we’d have to address everyone in the country, including maybe the sugar workers, who got zero in the whole APNU period…We cannot go back in the past,” the general secretary firmly expressed.
On April 19, High Court Justice Sandil Kissoon will hand down his decision in the case brought by the GTU against the Government of Guyana, wherein the GTU has petitioned the court to find that the five-week strike was legal, and that teachers are entitled to be paid even while they had been on strike.

Better working
conditions under the PPP
Under the PPP/C Administration, teachers’ wages and salaries have grown by 61 per cent, according to Dr Jagdeo at a past press conference. For context, he explained that the wage bill had increased from $24.4 billion in 2020 to $39 billion in 2023, representing a 61.4 per cent increase in salaries for teachers.
Moreover, he said, the education sector’s budget has been significantly increased: from 51 billion dollars in 2020 to 135 billion dollars in the current year, marking a substantial increase of about 162 per cent. This funding has enabled a series of improvements in the sector, including infrastructural development and the erection of several state-of-the-art education facilities across Guyana.