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Some school heads recently met with President Irfaan Ali. When the announcement came that President Ali was going to meet with teachers outside of the Guyana Teachers Union, the GTU objected. The union is the primary bargaining agent for teachers. From its inception it has been negotiating with government for better pay for the teachers. Until Bharrat Jagdeo, as President, began to issue across-the board pay hikes to every section of the Guyana workforce, teachers secured their benefits by negotiating.
A few years ago, the government agreed on housing loans for the teachers. This was interesting because in the final analysis the teachers had to be the ones who would qualify for the loans and who would have to repay the money. But some teachers found the conditions acceptable. Many had no collateral with which to approach the bank for loans. By being teachers, and permanent teachers, they had collateral. Then a private sector agency, with the backing of the government enabled teachers to own cars. The government decided which category of teacher would benefit from duty free concessions. But since those measures, the government has been refusing to negotiate with the teachers.
So when I saw that President Ali was meeting with head teachers I became interested. At least there would be some negotiations. But when the GTU critiqued the meeting, I found out that the heads and other senior teachers meeting with President Ali were in fact, handpicked. The entire operation was for photo opportunities and for a public relations exercise. General Secretary of the GTU, Coretta McDonald, exposed the fact that one of the heads was the mother of a child fathered by a former senior PPP official. Some of them were related to party officials in the system.
Then the meeting was reduced to a farce. The headmistress of St Stanislaus College embarrassed any serious-minded teacher. To this day, I can still her asking the President to approach Digicel for one thousand dollars in credit for teachers in their cell phones. And this appeared to be a one-off request or contribution from Digicel. How low can a senior official stoop? What other trifles would an official beg for? There were serious issues. One teacher pointed out that they receive a uniform allowance of $8,000 per year. That is less than $700 per month; the cost of pressing two shirts at Crystal Laundry opposite Parliament Buildings.
The uniform or clothing allowance needs to be increased.
These are the people who must fashion the children to become the leaders. Many children go on to earn more than the people who teach them, but that has always been the case in Guyana. In Malaysia and in South Korea, teachers are the third highest paid people in the country. In Guyana, they are among the worse, slightly better than the cleaners. Perhaps it is to the good of the profession that those who attended the meeting with President Ali did not have to report back to the staff. In fact, the staff was not even aware of the meeting.
But that is not the only occasion of the president trying to undermine any legitimate organisation that is challenging him to do the right thing. And he is not the only Guyanese head of state to adopt that posture.
There was the case of the man who confronted Bharrat Jagdeo at Rosignol on the NIS issue. The man spoke about the failure of the NIS to increase pensions alongside the increases the government awards public servants and other categories of workers. Immediately Jagdeo told the man that the NIS does not have money. The man was no fool. He knew that the law says that the government must fund such organisations. They included what was then known as the COFA group.
The man said as much and Jagdeo concurred. But he caused the man to pay a price. The man was made to suffer for his benefits. And there has been no increase in NIS pensions. At the meeting with President Irfaan Ali one teacher spoke about having a medical person in schools in the event of eventualities. Ali immediately said that hospitals could then ask for teachers. To be honest, that would not be a bad thing. Many of the nurses are semi-literates. They cannot spell. In-house trainers have to be careful about the examinations they set. In one case at the West Demerara Regional Hospital, a matron actually complained that she didn’t know what the nursing profession was coming to.
Before this meeting with the head of state, the teachers’ union was made to discuss the issues with Education Minister Priya Manickchand and Minister of Governance, Gail Teixeira. Neither had a clue about what the teachers’ union had discussed months and even years earlier with Jagdeo, and later, with Irfaan Ali.
Gone are the days when each year teacher got an incremental rise on their pay. Such is now the case that a teacher coming out of training college would be earning the same pay as a teacher who had been in the system for five years.
This was the issue of debunching that the teachers’ union has been lobbying the government about. Years have passed; there has been a lot of talking but nothing has been done. Two years ago President Ali promised that he would get around to improving the lot of teachers and nurses and public servants. That is an idle promise. But some say that the talk about One Guyana is also idle talk.
