THE Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) and the Ministry of Education (MoE) are set to meet today on the signing of the official document on shared agreement for salary increases.
This was confirmed by GTU Executive Lancelot Baptiste on Tuesday. Baptiste told the Guyana Chronicle that the meeting is set to take place at the Ministry of Education at 14:00hrs.

Last Thursday, GTU General-Secretary Coretta McDonald relayed that the two parties were still “ironing out” a few non-salary issues.

The GTU and MoE were scheduled to meet last Wednesday to sign the official document, following an amicable settlement reached on the matter on October 12, 2018.

Coming out of the October meeting, it was agreed that teachers will receive a 12 per cent retroactive payout for 2016; incremental increases of eight per cent for the years 2017 and 2018, while a sum of $350M was being offered for debunching for the period 2011 – 2018.
However, speaking with the newspaper last week, McDonald stated that non-salary issues too were, at the time, still being worked out.

These included duty-free concessions, class sizes and qualification allowances.
“For the duty-free allowance,” McDonald had said, “the GTU needs to be clear on the ‘cc’ that is going to be approved: whether it’s going to be 1800cc or 2000cc.”
And in the case of the qualification allowance, she stated that there is a technicality regarding the number of teachers that are expected to get an allowance for a particular qualification.

She explained further that certificates in education are no longer being offered; these have been replaced by management certificates.

“It’s just a mere case of switching names and ascertaining the amount of teachers that would have completed that programme. All it would change is the amount of persons that would receive this allowance,” she said.

Regarding class sizes, McDonald said the GTU wants already existing laws to be enforced [and] observed at all times.

“We’re hoping that it wouldn’t become a problem. The thing is, the faster we get these out of the way and have the agreement signed, it’s better for us; because that means it’s going to pave the way for early talks for the 2019 process,” she had said.