Minister of Education, Nicolette Henry, signaled that the Ministry of Education (MoE) may be moving to the arbitration stage in its dispute with the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU).

The MoE and GTU are invited by the Ministry of Social Protection Department of Labour to another conciliation meeting tomorrow at 13:00hrs, and speaking with Guyana Chronicle on Wednesday the Minister indicated that it may very well be the last such meeting.

“Today both parties: the MoE and GTU, were invited to what I believe may be the final conciliation meeting by the Ministry of Social Protection. We have to conclude conciliation before we can move onto arbitration,” the Minister said.

This will be the fourth such meeting at the Department of Labour, with the GTU not attending the first meeting, and the last two meetings ending in deadlock after the GTU said it would not acquiesce to conciliation and mandated that the dispute move to arbitration.

GTU president confirmed that the Union will be attending today’s meeting but only to reaffirm its call for the dispute to move to arbitration. GTU maintains that the Department of Labour has compromised the conciliation process by being a part of the negotiations stage.

“Well we hope that they agree for us to go to arbitration. If not then we continue have an impasse. The process of conciliation is mandated by law, so we attend but we stated our position very early on that we don’t have any confident in the people who are spear heading the conciliation. So while we attend it’s not that we are in agreement of what is happening, it’s that we’re mandated to do so,” Lyte said.

At the first conciliation meeting they attended, on August 29, Lyte established that the Union would call off the strike “immediately” if the issue moves to arbitration.

Several teachers across the country are currently on strike as the two entities dispute over salary increases and other issues.