The Ministry of Education yesterday announced a 5% pay hike for teachers and withdrew from the proposed arbitration which it had agreed to.
The across-the-board increase for all teachers was ten per cent less than what the union representing teachers was bargaining for and came one day after the government made a similar award to traditional public servants. Both decisions came after months of back-and-forth negotiations.
President of the Guyana Teachers' Union, Sydney Murdock, in an invited comment, described the ministry's move as an act of "bad faith" saying it had prolonged the negotiations for more than a year only to disappoint everyone at the last moment. The GTU and the Ministry of Education had been at odds over salary increases for 2002 and this year.
Last year the ministry had also awarded teachers a similar increase and had proposed 4.8% for this year; the union's final request was for 15%. Negotiations between the two sides broke down at the level of conciliation resulting in the GTU calling out its members on strike which lasted for several weeks until the two sides agreed to take the dispute to arbitration.
The parties had agreed on the terms of reference and their respective nominees on the arbitration panel, however they failed to agree on a chairman from among the names they both submitted. With this issue unresolved Chief Labour Officer, Mohamed Akeel, had called on Minister of Labour, Dr Dale Bisnauth, to nominate a chairman.
Contacted yesterday, Akeel confirmed that he presided over a meeting which was called by the Ministry of Education, where it an-nounced its withdrawal from the arbitration process and the five per cent across-the-board increase. Attempts by Stabroek News to contact Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education, Ganga Persaud on the award and the reason behind the withdrawal from arbitration failed.
In a press release issued yesterday afternoon, the GTU said it was now clear why the Ministry of Education had refused to sign the terms of reference for the arbitration process on Monday. The GTU said the ministry's decision had confirmed what it had been saying all along that it had no intention of going to arbitration.
"The GTU wishes to make it clear that it is not a part of the imposition of five per cent on the salaries of teachers in the Public Education system, because we know that our teachers deserve much more than five per cent."
"The GTU will respond at the right time and in a manner of its choosing," the release added.
On Wednesday at a press conference the union had threatened that it would lobby international funding agencies assisting Guyana in the education sector about the state of play as regards the education system.
Meanwhile, in a press release the Government Infor-mation Agency (GINA) said an official at the Education Ministry informed that the decision was made taking into account the time of the year and the needs and demands of teachers.
According to GINA payments will be made retroactive to January 1, 2003 and over 11,000 teachers will benefit from this payout.
The release said the ministry was in the process of sending correspondence about the increase to the various regional education officers and head teachers.
Giving a breakdown of what could be the salaries for teachers with the five percent increase, GINA said that a junior teacher will now take home $32,120, a teacher with five CXC subjects $32,208 and a teacher with two A-level subjects $43,300. A teacher with three A-level subjects and a trained teacher will both take home $61,440. An untrained graduate teacher will take home $84,908 and a trained graduate teacher $94,920.