THE Government of Guyana (GoG) and the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) are making “serious progress,” Vice President, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo has said.
As the government remains committed to getting the nation’s educators and its kids back to the classrooms, Jagdeo, during a press conference at the Office of the President (OP) on Thursday last, noted that, recently, there have been some good engagements with the GTU.

“The ministry and the union have had some recent good engagements, exchange of letters. And I think we’re moving forward and hopefully, we’ll get back to the table. I’ve seen some serious progress being made recently.”
Further, he reaffirmed that the government is prepared to have a multiyear agreement from 2024 going forward.

Jagdeo, however, related that the government is still in disagreement with the High Court’s recent ruling in the case, which stated that teachers should be paid during the time they were on strike.
“We disagree with the judge that there was no collective bargaining. We had a meeting when the union went on strike,” he said, noting that talks were still ongoing up to a week before the strike commenced.

“If that ruling stands, any worker now can go on strike and make the argument that we have a court ruling which says that we should be paid for the days we strike, whether in the public sector or private sector.”
Last year, President Dr Irfaan Ali held consultations with several educators. During that engagement, the Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand and Senior Finance Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh, were present and heard the concerns of teachers.

Subsequently in November, the Head of State had announced increases to teachers’ salaries and other interventions.
These accumulated to a total of $1.9 billion. Providing a scenario so persons could understand how the increases would apply, President Ali had said that a graduate Senior Mistress/Head of Department will now have their current salaries adjusted upwards from $243,069 to $262,917, and with the inclusion of the revision to education allowances, this represents an overall 12 per cent increase compared to the previous minimum salary paid to such persons.

In the case of a graduate Senior Assistant Mistress working in the hinterland, the current minimum salary was adjusted upwards from $223,232 to $243,076, and with the inclusion of the revision to education allowances and Remote Areas Incentive (RAI), this will represent an overall 16 per cent increase compared to the previous minimum salary paid to such persons.

Outside of salaries and allowances, all teachers who hold a substantive appointment as a Senior Master/Mistress or above, and are within three years of retirement and have not previously received a duty-free concession on a motor car, are entitled to a duty-free concession for a motor car up to 1500cc.