Dear Editor,
With 2016 now having entered into its final few weeks, the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) wishes to restate its ongoing and mounting concern over the failure, up until now, for the ongoing negotiations between itself and the Government of Guyana to bear any meaningful fruit in the various issues on the negotiating agenda.
The Union is on record as having:
- Clearly stated its rejection of the 2016 wages and salaries increase offer made by the Government of Guyana and deemed the payout made by the Government of Guyana in October 2016 to have been an interim measure.
As a consequence, the Union called for the speedy return to the negotiating table to address with alacrity the remaining issues on the agenda including allowances, debunching, increments and other conditions of services for Public Servants.
Contextually, the Union believes that it is the expectation of public servants that (a) the appropriate mechanism for ensuring continuity in the wages and salaries negotiations will be effected with due haste and (b) that there will be an early return to the negotiating table in order that the various other unfinished items can be dealt with.
While there have been exchanges of correspondence between the Union and the Government of Guyana on the aforementioned issues over the past several weeks, it is not the view of the Union that the Government of Guyana is attaching to these matters the merited level of urgency and importance.
It had been the expectation of the GPSU that the negotiations between itself and the Government of Guyana would have, by now, realized much more than an “unreasonable and unacceptable” wages and salaries offer and that we would have at least arrived at a point where the talks would have resulted in some measure of seasonal satisfaction. That, regrettably, has not been the case.
At this juncture, the GPSU wishes to make the point that it remains both disappointed and concerned over the fact that the Government of Guyana negotiators do not appear to attach the deserving level of urgency to treating with the aforementioned issues in a fair and reasonable manner. We believe that this posture ignores the continuing anguish and frustration of Public Servants and sends a message that might even raise questions about the extent to which any serious value is placed on the contribution that Public Servants make. Equally importantly, the GPSU ponders the seeming dichotomy between the publicly articulated desire on the part of the Government of Guyana for meaningful and comprehensive public service reform, on the one hand, and the seeming disposition of indifference to hastening the pace of the ensuing negotiations on wages, salaries and allowances, among other things, in the other. From the GPSU’s perspective it should be made clear that it is not realistic to anticipate a qualitatively enhanced Public Service in circumstances where little corresponding attention is being paid to adequately incentivizing Public Servants to rise to challenges that are being set them.
In this context the GPSU wishes to point out to the Government of Guyana that it is in its own interest and the interest of the people of Guyana as a whole that the issue of the emoluments of the nation’s Public Servants be treated with the level of urgency and importance that it deserves. There is, even at this time, manifest evidence that demands are being made of Public Servants and the Public Service that are inconsistent with the rewards that they are being offered.
Accordingly, the GPSU calls on the Government of Guyana to remove the aura of uncertainty that currently attends the negotiations by:
Immediately and clearly addressing its position on the agreed mechanism for addressing the deadlocked negotiations on wages and salaries; and
Proposing a time line that does not extend beyond the end of November for the resumption of determined and diligent negotiations on the remaining agenda items in the negotiating process.
Both Public Servants and the Union anticipate an immediate and positive response from the Government of Guyana.
Yours faithfully,
Indira Thakurdin
Executive Assistant
Guyana Public Service Union