Teachers’ Union fails to account for membership dues- Jagdeo

Last Updated on Thursday, 8 February 2024, 18:19 by Denis Chabrol

Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo on  Thursday said future talks with the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) have a hit a major stumbling block as that bargaining agent has not submitted audited statements and financial records since the 1980.

“They’ve been running down this union. This is an unaccountable union by any standards,” he said. He further claimed that the GTU breached the Trade Union Recognition Act by failing to submit financial statements to the Registrar of Trade Unions since 2004.

President of the GTU, Dr Mark Lyte declined to comment immediately as he had not listened to the news conference.

In addition to being fined and convicted for failing to do so, he said the GTU could be scrubbed from the registry. “They can be struck off from the register of trade unions now because that’s one of your obligations is to submit this to be considered an active trade union,” he said. Mr Jagdeo said he was not advocating for the GTU to be taken off the register but he hoped that remedial actions would be taken.

The Vice President said the GTU has collected billions of dollars in membership dues but the last audited statement that had been submitted to the Auditor General since 1989. “We don’t know how they spent the money in 30 years,” he said.

He said the state of affairs at he GTU raised serious questions such as how much money was collected, how it was spent and where are the accounts for 30 years, why they were not audited and why the union’s constitution was being violated.

Mr Jagdeo said the sectors would now have to pay keen attention to the state of affairs of unions such as the GTU as far as their engagements with the government was concerned.

The Vice President sought to justify an end to the automatic check-off of teachers’ union dues on behalf of the GTU, saying that the strike was politically motivated and racially divisive.