THE annual National Schools Championships (Nationals) will feel the ripple effect of the ongoing strike action and may be cancelled altogether, if an amicable solution is not reached between the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) and Ministry of Education (MoE).

Usually held in November, Nationals is executed as collaboration between the GTU and MoE. However, with the two parties currently deadlocked over salary negotiations and many teachers, including several district representatives, on strike, the fate of the Championships is in limbo.

GTU president Mark Lyte posited that the Championships may very well be cancelled if the strike action continues.

“Because National Schools Championships comes after inter-house, inter-school, inter-zone and so on  it (the strike) is going to have an impact and we probably may not have any (Championships),” Lyte said in an interview on Monday.

“You would know that the Union plays a significant role in the organising and running off of the National Schools Championships. The fact that we have lost actually a week and it looks as though we would lose another week, definitely it’s going to have an impact on the National Schools Championships.”

It is in September that most schools begin their inter-house sports activities, which they would use to select athletes that will represent them at the interschool level before the competition progresses all the way to the National Schools Championships.

Nationals usually involve competition in athletics, swimming and cycling, with students from all across the country, grouped into 15 districts.

There is still time for the competitions to run off. However it will depend on how much longer the strike continues.

“We won’t be able to decide on that now; it depends on when the strike comes to an end. Whatever time remains in the term will determine how the Championships will be affected, but the longer we stay off on strike the more impossible it will be for anything to happen,” Lyte clarified.

Touching also on last year’s plans to have Nationals moved up to being held earlier in the year, Lyte said that too remains uncertain, so Nationals was expected to continue in November since no further talks on the move was ever done.