Job creation tied to education; Public Service Inquiry will address teachers’ salaries- Granger

Last Updated on Friday, 2 October 2015, 18:35 by GxMedia

The creation of thousands of jobs will depend on children being properly educated, but teachers would possibly be paid higher salaries only after a Commission of Inquiry into the public service completes its work, President David Granger announced Friday.

“That promise has gone before the Lutchman Commission which is now receiving memoranda and representations from all public servants including teachers and at the end of it you will see a ruling which will include nurses, teachers and all other branches of the public service,” he told Demerara Waves Online News after a news conference.

In the 2015 National Budget, the new administration awarded teachers a five percent increase in salaries retroactive to January of this year.

The A Partnership for National Unity+ Alliance For Change (APNU+ AFC) coalition had promised that teachers would be the highest paid public servants so that they would remain in Guyana and help to educate and equip children.

Granger also announced that from next year parents, who send their children to school, would be rewarded reduce school-dropouts at the primary. “Instead of the school transport voucher, we have something which will reward parents who keep their children in school…and in so doing we feel that in years we’ll have a more literate population which can be better employed in development projects.”

Asked what was being done to fulfill his campaign promise in the run-up to the May 11, 2015 general and regional elections to create more jobs, he said “It is no point going out and promising people jobs when they do not have the skills or the education level to support the jobs that you want to provide so our mechanism is to get more children to remain in school.”

He said Amerindian children, who would have dropped out from school, are also being targeted to provide them with agro-processing skills that would be beneficial to them and their communities.