Dear Editor,
First, let me extend kudos to Members of Parliament Sheila Holder and Aubrey Norton for forcing the government to discuss the withdrawal of the Critchlow subvention that eventually brought out their sinister agenda. It is an outrage that the Minister of Education, Mr Sheik Baksh can think he has the sole authority to determine how the monies of taxpayers are spent. The Minister is out of order to deny Critchlow its subvention because the unions are not behaving as he or his government thinks fit. The unions’ behaviour has nothing to do with Critchlow. Critchlow is about education. The union is about wages and living conditions. People are not fooled.
Furthermore, the disunity in the unions was instigated by the government when in 1999 the police shot unarmed striking public servants. GAWU and NAACIE walked out of the TUC after the TUC protested the police shooting. And here we are now. Minister Baksh is forgetting history or hoping people will.
After pulling GAWU and NAACIE out of the TUC, the next target was to take away the GPSU agency shop that weakened the union financially, then they broke up the bauxite industry and weakened the bauxite unions, then it was the Teachers Union, then the TUC subvention. After instigating the pull out of their unions, they financially disemboweled the African dominated unions and federated TUC making them weak to mobilize, stand together and fight for workers rights.
The AFC and PNC must go back to parliament with the connected dots, the facts abound, and demand that the government stops its racism. Let the Hansard record it!
What does the Minister mean that the “subvention is subjected to conditions, not a free for all?” The money that the government refuses to give to the TUC and children of Critchlow is not the government’s money, it is the people’s money, a significant portion of which Africans contribute.
This government sees it fit to deny a section of this society their right to worker representation and an education but pumps millions of tax dollars into the Cheddi Jagan Research Institute, the President Youth Programme, FITUG May Day Rally, favoured unions, computers to make cane cutters computer literate and other pet projects of theirs.
Africans are demanding that some of our tax dollars go towards the TUC and our children’s education. This is no “free for all” Mr Minister, it’s our right and we demand returns on our significant investment into the Treasury.
Yours faithfully,
Osafo Modibo.
