PRESIDENT David Granger says that he is astonished by the Guyana Teachers Union’s (GTU’s) plan to reject the most recent wage offer put forward to the body by the government for teachers.
On Wednesday at State House, the President spoke to the media on the sidelines where he detailed the events which transpired during previous engagements.
“The GTU had a very long engagement with the Ministry of Education on Friday and, as a sequel to that engagement, I personally met the Union on Monday right here at State House ,” the Head of State said.
He said the meeting was quite favorable and that ,”we were finally coming to the end of this crisis.”
At the meeting, a new salary offer was extended to the GTU which would see teachers being paid retroactive salary increases beginning with 10 percent for 2016, and incremental increases of 8 percent for 2017 and 2018, respectively. A sum of $350M is being offered for debunching for the period 2011 – 2018.
Coming out of the meeting, the President had said that he was optimistic that the two sides have found “common ground” and “are now closer to a resolution than ever before.”
The Ministry of Education (MoE) and the GTU are set to meet later today to confirm the decision made by the union. Recent reports state that ahead of the important meeting, the GTU has made known its intention to reject the new offer following it’s non-acceptance by its members.
GTU General Secretary, Coretta McDonald was also reported as stating that, consequently, the Government would now either need to rethink its position or the parties would have to head to arbitration.
Responding to these reports, President Granger said that the list of matters raised by the GTU in at least one newspaper and which was attributed to one person, were not matters that were raised on Monday.
“Some of the matters which seem to be reported in the media were not raised on Monday, were not even raised on Friday, otherwise we would have resolved them. So, it was quite astonishing that these matters, going back to the appointment of an arbitrator, these matters didn’t come up at all. So, I was quite surprised that matters that we assumed had been settled as of Monday found their way into the columns of the newspaper in Wednesday,” he stated.
The President elaborated further: “We also had an understanding — I won’t call it an agreement — that the Government’s side was obliged to go back to the Ministry of Finance in order to verify the figures and that the Union’s side would go back to the Executives in order to ratify the figures. So when we parted on Monday morning there was no talk about going to the media, ‘trial by the media’, there was talk about verification of the figures from the Ministry of Finance and maybe seeking the assent by the Executives of the GTU.”
Sources close to the union told the Guyana Chronicle that the GTU will seek to have the government to up the 10 percent and 8 percent offers made by the President.
Added to this, the union wants to see some agreements on a range of non-salary benefits. Despite the timing, President Granger told the media on Wednesday that the Government will nonetheless look into the new discussions.
When questioned on how the Government intends to deal with possible rejection from the GTU today, the President responded:
“In the first instance, we met on Monday and the word ‘rejection’ wasn’t mentioned. There was no talk about rejection there were talks about consultation and that on the Government side we will go back to the Ministry of Finance for verification and the Union’s side will go back to their members, presumably the Executives because you can’t go back to the whole Union, to discuss the proposals that were at the table. So at present, I can’t answer that question because no new proposals have been put to the Government by the GTU beyond what was discussed on Monday,” the President stated.
