Dear Editor,
It is sometimes invaluable for one to reflect on what ‘hypocrisy’ is. It can be defined as the state of pretending to have beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities, or standards that one does not actually have.

On reading the AFC’s statement and that on the Leader of the Oppositions on salary increase for teachers, I felt compelled to vent my repugnance to these hypocritical utterings. It would seem that Mr Norton now realised that the mental well-being of teachers should be a priority.

I must draw Messrs Ramjattan and Norton attention to some of what they promised the people of Guyana, such as ‘significant salary increases’ to the public servants, ‘20% increase across the board’ to sugar workers, no closure of any sugar estate, ‘$9,000 per bag of paddy’, etcetera.

In the Kaieteur News of October 6, 2022, the headline blasts “AFC proposes $100,000 pay hikes for teachers”.  Sounds goods, but what has the AFC ever done for teachers when they were in government?

It was a then AFC Minister who in 2015 said the 50 per cent hike in salaries and benefits for minister was ‘fair’ and ‘necessary’ and the people of Guyana must ‘trust’ them but in the same breath refused to pay the teachers at the bottom of the scale in 2015 a cent over $50,000.  Now these snake oil sales persons in the AFC are coming with their crocodile tears demanding $100,000 for the teachers when they refused to do anything good for those in the education and the other sectors when they were in power during the period 2015-2020.

What did they give the teachers in 2015, a measly five per cent? What did the Ramjattan cabal given themselves? Ten times that rate (50 per cent). To compound the deception and disingenuousness, in the same year 2015, it was none other than the man in charge – Mr. Joseph Harmon who said ‘he would make no apologies for the 50 per cent salary increase to Cabinet Ministers’, arguing it was well deserved. Well the pertinent question is: Was $100,000 per month for the teachers not well deserved in 2015 too under these APNU/AFC chatterers?

The PPP/C Government is cognisant of the needs of all Guyanese and will give increases at the right time to ensure that the inflation rate is kept in check and we all know once the budget allows it, President Irfaan Ali and Vice-President Bharat Jagdeo, who both came from humble beginning, will do all in their power to give the best to all workers, especially the teachers. The government does not need the deceptive cries of the hypocrites to be a reminder of the needs of the working class Guyanese.

For those who do not know, His Excellency the President grew up in a home that is headed by a mother and a father who are dedicated teachers and thus he intimately knows of the challenges of the teaching profession.  So, Mr. Ramjattan can stop clutching at the straws and deal first with the mutiny in the AFC against him and address his record of poor leadership while in government and seek to temper his wild talk that is full of hot air.  The more he speaks, the more his political platform crumbles because the people continue to see him for who he really is. It is these people in the AFC and the APNU who eliminated some 7,000 jobs in the sugar industry and then refused to pay the people their severance pay.  It took a court ruling to force them to settle with the workers.

Today, these people suddenly want to champion the cause of the teachers and by extension the very people they kicked out of jobs?  Shame on them!  The people know and the evidence will clearly demonstrate in 2025 that there is only one road for Mr. Ramjattan, his AFC acolytes and the APNU: that is the way out of government forever.

Yours sincerely,
Haseef Yusuf