Dear Editor,
The samples referred to are from numbers published in APPENDIX R (b) – to the Government’s 2022 Budget – titled: SCHEDULE OF SALARY IN THE TEACHING SERVICE. The format would not differ except in actual numbers from time to time:
It would be interesting to learn how many of the respective combatants from the Ministry of Education and the Guyana Teachers’ Union are aware that (a) the current ‘SALARY’ structure obtained before our Independence, (b) the current ‘Job Titles’ are almost exactly the same; but that (c) ‘Salary Scales’ were once acknowledged with the actual payment of annual increments, as in the comparator Public Service.
Unlike the latter however, within the pretentious number of nineteen (19) scales there are included subscales as shown below:
In addition to the above there is a salary (not a Scale) described as SPECIAL valued singularly in the column ‘MAXIMUM’, which harshly means that the job-holder is not eligible for ‘increment’ for the rest of his/her career. Nor can TS1 be regarded as a substantive scale since only a ‘Maximum’ value is simplistically assigned thereto. Even while concentrating on Budget 2022, the following decades-old arithmetic inconsistencies persist:
Incidentally, throughout these decades there appear to be minimal changes to such ‘Job Titles’ as: (1) Temporary Unqualified, (2) Temporary Qualified (for how long? (3) Non-Graduate-ranging from Grades TS4 – TS9, (4) Untrained Graduate Master (No Mistress!) – TS6, and, how is this DESCRIPTOR reconciled?)
How does a permanent job structure maintained by so many ‘Temporaries’ and ‘Non-Graduates’, respected throughout the Caribbean for their productivity? How yet is simple arithmetic so suspect? Why are the chronically barrow BANDWIDTHS not challenged? Why does the GTU in particular not investigate across the Caribbean such comparabilities as: (a) Job Titles and related values; (b) Application of Increments; (c) The promotion process; (d) The career span and other issues of relevance?
Sincerely,
E. B. John
Retired Consultant
