Hundreds of teachers gathered in front of the Department of Education, Anna Regina, yesterday morning to take part in the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) countrywide strike.
The strike commenced from 10:00 am with teachers chanting, “We demand more than 6.5 increase”, “we want collective bargaining”, “we want more money”, “we fighting for a better tomorrow”, “Don’t expect excellence if you penny pinching”.
Speaking on behalf of the striking teachers was Takurdeen Durga, a Senior Master, who said teachers had gathered because of one issue which is “collective bargaining”. He said that with collective bargaining teachers will be happy. He said that for the past three years, the GTU has been trying to get the Ministry of Education to listen to the teachers’ plight.
“Today, we have decided that we will take industrial action in the form of a strike, we have to speak out only then we can get justice, we ink a lot of letters and nothing was done”, Durga said.
A teacher from 8th of May Primary School, Akeek Shepherd, said that he stood in solidarity with teachers countrywide. He said that teachers deserve a “livable wage” that can satisfy their basic needs. He said as it is, teachers are dissatisfied with the salary they are working with.
“We deserve better, we work for it, we mould the country’s children then why we can’t be paid for the work we doing? The increase we receive can’t work”, Shepherd said. A Cotton Field Secondary School teacher, Seema Scott, said that teachers deserve better. Scott said that teachers work beyond the call of duty for a child to produce good results and as such teachers deserve only the best.
“The Ministry want excellent results but teachers need to be happy, some teachers are single parents, they have to manage and do so many things… the salary is not good and we need more than 20 percent increase” another teacher said.
Minister of Education Priya Manickhand called the strike is illegal and while admitting that strikes are the people’s choice, she deemed the current strike as illegal. She was at the time responding to a teacher’s question on why it was illegal. Manickchand replied that there is an old Essential Services Act that is law. Teachers do not fall under the Essential Services Act.
“Strikes do not hurt me, they hurt the nation’s children, but this particular one… there are conditions for a strike to be lawful, a set of steps have to be followed, you have to get conciliation from the Ministry of Labour, get an arbitration, then strike… none of that happened”, Manickhand said. She also said that the Ministry of Education is constantly engaging the Guyana Teachers Union and are currently in talks. She repeated that out of forty-one requests made by GTU, her Ministry has fulfilled twenty-six.
The GTU has said it has been pushed around over the last three plus years in relation to collective bargaining. The Ministry recently told the GTU that it had misplaced correspondence and asked for it to be re-sent. The GTU said it had asked the Ministry of Labour for conciliation and also arbitration.
