The General Council of the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) yesterday decided to launch a “spontaneous protest” against what they described as attempts by the Ministry of Education (MoE) to sideline the union from decision making during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The issue is decisions being made without the union’s involvement. While there may have been a couple of meetings the Ministry actually did not consult us on several matters before arriving at decisions. In some ways the meetings were simply performative because when we met with the Ministry we raised concerns about the Covid environment in which teachers are working. We never had a meeting thereafter to say well look the Ministry is now going to move ahead with these measure instead they met with parents and teachers and decided when they would have examinations. Even if MoE consults with wider groups the union remains a major stakeholder in education representing about 75% of the teaching population they should’ve come back to the union and say look this is what the parents are saying this, this is what these teachers have said…they did not do that,” GTU President Mark Lyte told Stabroek News last evening.
He stressed that GTU is intent that no decision on the possible opening of schools for face-to-face learning will be made without all the union’s concerns being first addressed.
“We have written to them and engaged them via a joint WhatsApp group on this and other issues and received no response,’’ he shared, explaining that the union has written about five letters specific to issues of concern and receive no acknow-ledgment but one.
In the lone case where the letter was acknow-ledged the acknow-ledgment came six weeks after its dispatch once the union started publicly complaining.
“Every time the union tries to raise a matter and demands action the government does some-thing to quiet the dissent. They call a meeting or send a letter but no meaningful engagement is actually happening,” he stressed, adding that “teachers are believing that the union is not addressing their concerns because time is going and no feedback is received.”
In response, Minister of Education Priya Manickchand declared the protest political, charging that the union appears to be casting aside professio-nalism for partisanship.
“The union must decide if it wants to separate itself from being a political organization, if it wants to separate itself from the nasty politics of the APNU+AFC and continue being a professional body or if it wants to engage in that kind of politics. The PPP/C as a party and as a government has never shied away from dealing politically with political organizations and we wouldn’t ever. We are happy to engage the union as a professional union but if it becomes a political entity and frankly that’s how it is shaping up, then we will engage it as a political entity,” Manickchand told an emergency press conference after the protest.
Notably, the Minister spent a significant portion of the press conference attempting to dismiss the concerns raised as manifestations of “hurt feelings” from General Secretary Coretta McDonald who is an Opposition Member of Parliament.
Repeatedly referring to the trade unionist in disparaging terms, the Minister declared that “Coretta is a political being” and the union must decide if it too is a political being.
It is not clear what position of the opposition the union is accused of representing in its protest.
According to the Minister she has met with the union on several occasions beginning on August 11,2020.
“That was six days after I was sworn in and five days after I had taken office [because] that was how important I believe the [GTU] as a stakeholder group is. From then to now, we have met six times and on every occasion, we have had what I thought and what the union said were productive meetings…the last few scheduled meetings have been postponed at the behest of the union,” the Minister shared while claiming that the issues raised during the protest warranted letters of complaint rather than protest action.
According to Manickchand the union’s complaint that the Ministry has sidelined them in favour of talking directly to teachers is unlikely to be addressed.
“While the union is an important stakeholder they are not the only stakeholder the Ministry consults with…the union seems to be burying its head in the sand…we have been speaking to teachers and that is what informs our policy. It was the teachers that asked us to put the date at the first week of August,” she shared.
Notably the Ministry attempted to dismiss concerns about unpaid uniform allowances for 2019 as an APNU+AFC matter telling the union that they need to take that protest to Congress Place, the headquarters of the PNCR.
This direction for Lyte is disrespectful.
“You can’t put blame on a party. It is ridiculous. Government inherits agreements. Good or bad. GTU does not have an agreement with any political party, it has an agreement with the Government of Guyana,” he reminded.
Manickchand also claimed that de-bunching is an issue inherited by her government after five years of inaction by the previous government.
:This is not true. The de-bunching of the teaching service was first agreed in 2011 but not enacted by the PPP/C administration. As part of negotiations to end the 2018 strike action the then APNU+AFC paid a one-off lump sum of $350M to teachers and agreed to the crafting of a de-bunching scale. That scale is still to be finalised. De-bunching is not a political issue. The whole claim that the protest is political has no merit,” Lyte maintained
