– wants conditions withdrawn

BY Ariana Gordon

GENERAL-SECRETARY of the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) Lincoln Lewis says the Critchlow Labour College (CLC), managed by the GTUC will not be accepting the $15M subvention granted it by the Government of Guyana unless the government withdraws the conditions to which the money can be collected.Speaking with the Guyana Chronicle on Wednesday, Lewis said that the utterances by Finance Minister Winston Jordan on Monday demonstrates that he is not fully acquainted or apprised of the situation facing the CLC.
Minister Jordan had slashed the subvention to the CLC by half and told reporters on Monday that the government will provide only what it can afford. Additionally, the Minister of Finance said the government is not mandated to fund the college.
“If you are going to refuse a gift then there is nothing we can do… Critchlow is not a government entity…we may make a contribution to it…we can offer what we can afford,” said Jordan.
He explained that Government has offered the CLC $15M and is also giving each union an annual subvention which amounts to over $30M.
“We are looking at the entire labour movement,” he said, noting that if the labour movement was not to remain independent,then avenues must be found to garner resources.
According to Lewis, the problem is not the amount of money offered but the conditions which must be complied with before the money is handed over. He said when representatives of the CLC visited the Ministry of Education to collect the money, they were told that seven years of audited statements of the institution must be presented along with some other documents.
“The Critchlow Labour College does not belong to the State. The State has not given Critchlow money over a number of years…so why must we go and account to them about the spending of funds when they did not given us any?”
He believes that the conditions set are done in an attempt for CLC representatives to refuse the money.
“I am sure the Minister of Finance is not aware of what I am talking about here. He is responding in a vacuum …When we go for the money, we don’t go to Ministry of Finance, we go to the Ministry of Education.”
He said he is not against rules, but believes that the rules of the game have to be discovered at the policy level.
“You can’t wake up and make these rules…next year somebody else is going to come with another set of rules. The things that are being asked for are similar to the same behaviour exhibited by the PPP government.”
Lewis said neither the CLC nor his union will undermine or destroy time- honoured principles at the expense of getting “a couple million dollars from the government.”
The college, he said, has come under the sledge hammer over the years and the GTUC has no problem with policies when it comes to money being provided to the CLC, but it is not in favour of having its accounts audited.
“Don’t ask us to account for how we spend our money… yes, Critchlow is not a State entity…”
The money was refused because of the dynamics involved to retrieve it, but Lewis made it clear that there is a fund in which State funds were placed in the past; that account he explained, used to be audited by the Auditor-General’s office.
“I have no problem having the government’s money accounted for and audited, but not all of Critchlow’s money,” the GTUC General-Secretary stated.

Meanwhile, Lewis said when the college stopped looking overseas for money to manage the institution, it was because the Government of Guyana at the time had engaged the GTUC and entered into an arrangement to have the requisite resources provided.
“Life has changed and hard economic circumstances came and there was a re-engagement with the government and GTUC, where we agreed that Critchlow would do cost recovery to meet budgetary needs,” Lewis explained.
He said since that arrangement each successive government, the People’s Progressive Party and APNU+AFC, have decided that the money received is being used by the union. The GTUC General Secretary said approximately 80 per cent of the persons who attend the CLC are not members of the GTUC.
“We are catering for a public that the State is supposed to cater for. When they talk about what they can’t afford. Can we afford not to pay money into education in this country… when [the] president is talking labour 4000 dropouts?”
Lewis said it is the persons who drop out of school that end up at CLC. The State has not funded the CLC for seven years between 2007 and 2014. Last year,the CLC received $5M subvention.