A meeting to discuss terms of resumption for striking teachers collapsed yesterday after the failure to agree that the issue of teachers’ salary increases for 2002 should be discussed and settled within two weeks.
Meanwhile the Guyana Teachers’ Union has announced that the strike action taken by the teachers since March 5 would continue for another school week.
GTU President Sydney Murdock also announced that the teachers would hold another protest march in the city tomorrow and would picket a number of places.
Schools are scheduled to close on April 11 and during this period most normally complete end-of-term exams.
At a press conference held at the GTU headquarters yesterday, Murdock said that six proposals had been put forward, one of which the union was not quite in agreement with but was not much of a problem, and the other was the salary increases which the union did not agree on.
Murdock said that the Parent Teachers’ Associations had called the union to throw their weight behind their cause as well as the Guyana Trades Union Congress. He is hoping that between “now and Wednesday (tomorrow) someone will see the light and suggest a reasonable way forward.”
At a subsequent press conference, Minister of Edu-cation Dr Henry Jeffrey said that people have been calling in at the ministry saying they want their children to go to school and teachers should not strike at this time. The vast majority did not feel that teachers should be striking at examinations time and affecting the work of the children.
He expressed concern at the union’s proposal to include the salary issue as a terms-of-resumption matter when that was the source of the dispute. He said that was one of the main issues which the Advisory Committee, set up by the Ministry of Labour, was to inquire into.
Dr Jeffrey said any such agreement would mean that the committee would no longer have any work to do.
But Murdock said it was “unreasonable for the fundamental reason for going on strike to be omitted from the terms of resumption after strike action.”
Asked whether the GTU recognised the Advisory Committee, headed by former pro-chancellor of the Univer-sity of Guyana, Dr Martin Boodhoo, Murdock said that he recognised it as a legal entity, would give evidence when called on, but had reservations on its ability to have its recommendations enforced.
Asked about students writing external examinations being affected and justifying strike action at this time, Murdock said that was nothing for the GTU to justify. He said that when the union took strike action from the inception it made its position very clear to the ministry. So in all fairness he said that the question should be directed to the Ministry of Education.
Asked about the ministry recruiting part-time teachers to help examination students, Murdock said that graduate teachers were paid $880 an hour and non-graduates $550 an hour. He said it would have made much more sense for the ministry to increase the salaries of the hard-working under-paid teachers.
The union was also invited to meet with the Advisory Committee yesterday but could not as the time and venue of that meeting clashed with the meeting called by the Ministry of Labour.
Meanwhile, from reports across the country, most schools, with the exception of those in Georgetown, Region Four and Region Ten, were open and classes were being conducted for students preparing for the Secondary Schools Entrance Examina-tions (SSEE) and the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) and General Certificate of Education (GCE) examinations.
Dr Jeffrey said that in relation to Regions Four and Ten the Education Departments were working to improve access for children to the examination classes.
While some teachers have told Stabroek News that it was out of care and concern that they were working with the examination children some have said that they had an obligation to teach the children because they were being paid by parents and guardians for giving extra lessons.
Commenting on the re-commendations of the advisory committee, Dr Jeffrey said that it would be difficult for anyone to necessarily walk away from these.
He said should the committee recommend to the labour ministry that the teachers get the increases and the labour ministry was so advised, then he assumed his ministry would be left with no choice but to pay.