By Abigail Headley
The GTU yesterday announced that teachers will be taking industrial action come February 5 until a favourable response is obtained from the Ministry of Education (MoE) and the other relevant authorities, regarding salary increases and non-salary benefits, among other pending issues.
Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) General Secretary Coretta McDonald last night expressed her frustration with the government’s handling of negotiations. According to her, in 2020 a proposal was submitted by the union to the government. This proposal, she explained was supposed to span from 2020 to 2023, but no response has been forthcoming on it, to date.
“So that proposal is what we’ve been arguing all the time about… We wrote them… We wrote the Ministry of Labour, since GTU and the Ministry of Education… since the two parties could not sit and agree on the form of negotiations, on what the outcome is going to be, we wrote the Ministry of Labour and we asked the Chief Labour Officer if the two sides cannot sit, let the Ministry of Labour now act as the mediator,” McDonald told Stabroek News.