Teachers should not suffer because of REO’s incompetence – GTU

Overpayment of teachers

The Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) has lashed out at the Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice) administration, particularly the Regional Executive Officer (REO) of Region Five, Ovid Morrison, for the recent announcement made to withhold teachers’ salaries for the month of June, due to what they claimed is overpayments.
General Secretary of the GTU, Coretta McDonald, told Guyana Times on Wednesday that the Union will not accept this move and will fight to ensure that this decision is reversed, as it not only places teachers in a bad light but it could affect their travel during the summer vacation.
“This thing about holding teacher’s salary is out of the question and GTU is not going to accept that. One of the things I pointed out, if you want to implement a system, you can’t implement now for now,” McDonald said making reference to the sudden decision taken by the REO.
The GTU official said this move is in direct contravention of International Labour Organisation (ILO) laws, pointing out that teachers would have worked for the month and deserve their salaries.
“You should have notified the teachers from the beginning so that they would have been able to put systems in place. But you can’t now come and tell a teacher last week, that at the end of the month I am not going to be paid, because they are travelling overseas. Teachers have bills too.”
McDonald blamed the accounting officers at the regional administration for the ongoing issue, stating that the buck stops with them, since they are the ones responsible for verifying payments.
“What we know for sure is that the head teachers, they would send in to the Department of Education after school would have been reopened, a list of teachers who resumed duty and who did not. Teachers should not be made to suffer at your incompetence,” she stated.
At the end of each month, teachers collect a pay sheet and would have to affix their signatures to that slip, which is then returned to the regional office. Morrison claimed that teachers are being overpaid in the region and some $80 million have been made in these overpayments.
“One needs to be very careful, are you saying this overpayment is for teachers who left and went overseas, or is that some teachers were caught up in the mix of the fact that they would have dismissed or they walked off the job but they were still receiving salaries?” the GTU official questioned.
She said there are other instances where teachers were dismissed but salaries are still being paid to those teachers and then there are other instances, where there are ghost teachers and salaries are being prepared for them.
“As far as we are concerned, we are just hearing about this $80 million overpayment but there is no documentation that would have been presented to us to say these are the facts. So, we are saying to the REO get the facts, present it us, so we can see what you are talking about and more than that go check the teachers who would have been overpaid,” she added.
In light of this issue, the GTU’s General Secretary suggested that the regional administration revert to the old system when teachers on contract would be asked to submit a guarantor if he or she wanted to leave the country or lodge a transport of a title.
McDonald told Guyana Times, however, that the REO is only concerned about withholding teachers’ June salary and not July and August, which in her mind is extremely strange. “I am not seeing the logic of what is being said,” she stated.
Permanent Secretary of the Education Ministry, Vibert Welch, said there is no policy to withhold teacher’s salaries before or after the period outlined by the REO. However, the regional administration is maintaining that a regulation is in place to do so.
Welch told a recent Public Accounts Committee meeting at the National Assembly that teachers who are proceeding on leave during the July-August school break will not see changes in their salaries.
It is still not clear how the REO came up with the figure of $80 million in overpayments for teachers.