Dear Editor,
The flexibility with which the compensation regimes in the Public Service is conducted, contrasts starkly with the evident meticulousness, if not meanness, that is applied to the Teaching Service component, as distinct even from the management and other technical components, of the education sector. The glaring obduracy towards establishing appropriate relativities in value of comparable positions in the Public Service and Teaching Service respectively, is an insult to those who educate the former categories of employees, unless perhaps it is considered that the latter have persistently failed to discharge their mandate. See the comparative Table A following.
Annexed also is a comparative portrayal of the significant inequitabilities existing between selected categories of Public Service employees and their (non-competitive) counterparts in the Teaching Service. The former include Guyana Fire Service, Guyana Prison Service, and General Register Office (Table B).
Table A
Teaching Service Commission
Schedule of Salary
(Appendix R (b) of Estimates of Public Sector 2013)
For the parsimonious rewards they receive, senior educators in particular must respond to:
i) oversight by the Ministry of Education; ii) students; iii) parents; iv) prospective employees; v) higher echelons of the education system; and vi) the community at large.
On the other hand, it is difficult to argue that comparable expectations of:
i) protection; ii) security; iii) safety; iv) stability; and v) service and related issues, are more than moderately satisfied by the uniformed agencies identified.
It is simply unbelievable that the Principal of Cyril Potter College of Education is considered as only nearly as valuable as the Divisional Officer in the Fire Service. Compounding this irrationality is the exceptional infliction of the former position being assigned a fixed salary, on top of a salary structure of twenty-eight other bands, which is euphemistically described as ‘Special.’ The true descriptor should be ‘Isolated.’
References to ‘Graduate’ are from the CPCE only UG ‘Graduates’ fall within the category of ‘Non-Graduate’ unless also having being trained at CPCE.
It is at least curious that a ‘Temporary’ position should be assigned a salary band, in the same manner as a ‘Permanent’ position.
The assignment of salary band TS1 (B) to ‘acting teacher’ could cause some confusion, since there is no comparable construction in the public sector, in which ‘acting’ takes place at several levels in the job hierarchy and is rewarded with an ‘acting allowance.’
Unfortunately this particular ‘teacher’ does not appear to act for any one.
Yours faithfully,
E B John
