Demerara Waves Online News- Guyana Riding on the Crest of Truth
Last Updated on Friday, 9 February 2024, 14:36 by Denis Chabrol
Teachers, backed by parents, vendors, and politicians, demonstrating outside the Ministry of Labour, Brickdam.
The Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) on Friday rubbished claims by Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo that the union has failed to submit its financial records under the law for several years to show how it has been spending millions of dollars in membership dues.
GTU Vice President, Collis Nicholson said financial records of that bargaining agent are presented at its delegates conference. “Totally false! . He explained that for the GTU’s triennial delegates conference, there is an internal and external audit of the financial records of the Guyana Teachers Union. “To say that our records were not audited since ’19-whatever it was’, that’s totally false,” he said.
Mr Jagdeo on Thursday alleged that the GTU had not submitted audited statements and financial records since the 1980 or financial statements to the Registrar of Trade Unions since 2004.
But according to that union official, he was not worried about Mr Jagdeo’s utterances because teachers have been attending delegates conferences and general council meetings, which is the second highest decision-making body of the Guyana Teachers’ Union and they have the information so we have nothing to hide about our financial records because we know that our records are properly audited,” he told Demerara Waves Online News from the picketing demonstration of hundreds of persons outside the Ministry of Labour.
He said the records were being submitted every three years to the Auditor General and the Registry of Trade Unions. “Everything is up to date,” he said.
Vice President of the Guyana Teachers’ Union, Collis Nicholson
The Trade Union Act requires that a general statement of the receipts, funds, effects, and expenditure of every trade union be transmitted to the Registrar before the 1st May in every year. That statement, according to the law, shall show fully its assets and liabilities at the date, and its receipts and expenditure during the year preceding the date, to which the statement is made out. The law also states that every member of, and depositor in, the union shall be entitled to receive, on application to the treasurer or secretary of the union, a copy of the general statement, without paying for it.
A source later said he was unaware of the need for annual submission to the Registrar.
Boasting that 90 percent of teachers have heeded the strike call, he brushed off Mr Jagdeo’s prediction that the GTU would be unable to pay more than GY$300 million in strike relief to teachers who would be losing pay for days off the job. “He should not be worried about if we have monies to pay. What he should be worried about is what he would tell the nation when the children cannot go to school to have a proper education,” he said. The GTU official said teachers would be staying away from work if government refuses to increase their salaries and other working conditions. In that regard, the union official said M Jagdeo would have to take full responsibility for the teachers “being on the road so that they are not there to mould the nation’s children.
Mr Nicholson also took issue with the Guyanese Vice President that government could not afford to pay higher salaries sustainably. The union official queried how it is that government could have paid a 6.5 percent retroactive pay increase last year plus a GY$25,00o to each public servant. “You’re telling me logically that your percentage increase could have been higher so to hear about the budget and to hear about the allocation, one doesn’t buy that because all that is cheap talk,” he said. Instead, the GTU Vice President challenged the government to go to the bargaining table and allow each side to present their figures rather than make statements in bad faith.
With the GTU, on Day 5 of the strike, not hearing receiving any word from the government about pay negotiations or conciliation, the GTU Vice President declined to say what would be the union’s next steps. “There are a number of things that we are going to do, some of which I would not want to go into because we don’t want our strategies to be out there but we have a proper process, we have all the strategies in place to do what we have to do and so our membership-the people who have asked us to do this- they are fully aware of what we’re doing,” he said.
The lowest paid in the public education system are the few remaining Unqualified Master/Mistress whose gross salary is GY$91,176 followed by Trainee Teachers whose gross salary is GY$104,003. The highest paid educator is the principal of the Government Technical Institute/ Linden Technical Institute or Cyril Potter College of Education at a gross of GY$409,632. At the school level, a Graduate Head of a 6th Form School gets GY$389,352 gross.
The Ministry of Education said 25 of the 41 requests by the GTU had been accepted and implemented.