AS the government works towards a resolution to the teachers’ pay dispute, the prime minister has urged teachers to not become easily misguided by those seeking to profit politically from the play of events.
In his weekly column ‘My Turn’, Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo stated that “teachers cannot allow themselves to fall for the silly strife of the political opposition,” who claim that the 2015 salary increase for government ministers comes at the expense of teachers.
Nagamootoo, in his article, reminded the public that it was under the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) administration that there seemingly existed a “permanent ‘five per cent’ syndrome” for teachers.
Yet, with government and the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) still at an impasse on the pertinent issue, Nagamootoo pointed out that there are some willing for the strike action to not only shut down schools, but to sabotage confidence in the coalition.
“As the academic year starts tomorrow, children who are now starting school will be looking towards a new life-long experience of meeting their teachers, and settling down in their classrooms, which is why the decision by teachers whether or not to be there for these children would be an agonising one.
“It is in the best interest of the children that contingency arrangements be put in place to ensure their safety, and not allow opportunistic elements to hijack the teachers’ cause for mischief,” the prime minister said.
It was while serving under the then opposition in 2011, the Alliance For Change (AFC), that Nagamootoo said that the party had called for an across-the-board 10 per cent increase for teachers.
Although the call went unheeded, Nagamootoo believes that these previous and present actions reaffirm the government’s position that teachers deserve greater benefits.
He added that within its means, this is what government will work towards achieving, even as it placed, upfront, some $900 million on the table.
However, Nagamootoo said that it is unsurprising that the opposition leader has “blurted out” that the government has sufficient funds to give teachers their initially demanded 40 per cent pay increase.
Added to this, the opposition leader suggested that the increase in salaries for government ministers impacts the salaries that teachers can now receive.
In response, the prime minister pulled back the curtains to the increases of public servants; government ministers and the former president, now opposition leader, over the years.
He first reminded that the “inflexible” position held by the then administration at a non-negotiable five per cent had led to a lengthy strike in the public service in 1999.
He then added that between 1998 and 2014, while salaries for public servants increased by 164.72 per cent, the pay of PPP ministers went up by 220.5 per cent and the salary of the then President, by 386.5 per cent.
“The truth is that in 2015, there was no across-the-board 50 per cent salary increase to government ministers. Nor has there been a cent increase since then, and over the past three years! The increase in 2015 was a one-off adjustment to the pay of mostly of junior and senior ministers, numbering under two dozen officials, and the fixing of salary for three first-time vice-presidents.
“The salary [sic] of junior ministers was adjusted to the level of a permanent secretary; and that of senior ministers to the level of a government adviser. The salary of the prime minister was adjusted upwards to be on par with that of the attorney general, who continues to receive a tax-free package,: he clarified.
The prime minister then added: “The salary of the ministerial bureaucracy has been subjected to periodic adjustments over many years. In 1992, the prime minister was getting just over $28,000. In comparison, the attorney general was taking home $78,000.
“By 2015, when the coalition took office, the salary of the prime minister was $1,549,000 and the attorney general to $1,630,000 tax-free. Over that period the president’s salary went up by some 500 percent! Those huge increases were doled out by the Jagdeo regime, not the coalition government. And there were no tears for teachers.”
Still, Nagamootoo noted that even as the spotlight is being placed on teachers, many others within the public sector have been owed a “wage debt” which must be settled as Guyana approaches significant oil wealth.
“While teachers have carried seemingly a life-time burden to educate our Guyanese generations and their fresh off-spring, there is a consensus that they have not been given adequate benefits for doing so. This would be true also for nurses and state security ranks,” he stated, later adding:
“In post-independent Guyana, public servants invariably carried the burden of structural adjustments, wage restraints, austerity programmes and deferred entitlements.”
However, on the pending issue, the prime minister recommends other non-salary benefits such as clothing allowances, which he believes may far exceed the “cursed five per cent straitjacket” the government inherited.
