Following their dissatisfaction from the outcome of a meeting with the Ministry of Education (MoE) on Thursday, the Guyana Teacher’s Union (GTU) has decided that teachers will be taking strike action come this September, after being unanimously advised to do such by several members.

President of the GTU, Mark Lyte, was met by immediate chants of “No School” from a collection of teachers who had gathered outside of the MoE building on Brickdam when they heard that the union could not accept what ministry’s offer.

“The GTU coming out of this meeting we cannot say that we are in agreement of what has been counter proposed,” Lyte informed his impassioned audience.

“One of the most important area would have been the debauching and increases (in salaries) by way of percentages. The government side made and offer with effect to current dates which we rejected. The union cannot accept current dates payment when we would not have had an agreement from 2016 to now, so we would want things to be retroactively addressed,” he said.

According to Lyte, the MoE is offering the teachers an overall payout of $700M towards salaries. However , Lyte contended that when stretched across the approximately 10,000 teachers in the system the money, will come up to very little individually.

The GTU/MoE meeting marked the last of several that the two bodies had been holding over the years as they continue to fail to come to an agreement on a way forward as it pertains to several issues facing the teachers. The most pressing of the lot being salary negotiations and the teacher’s debauching monies.

Braving the scorching sun on Thursday outside the ministry’s offices at Lot 21 Brickdam, the teachers waited over 2 hours for the meeting to come to a close and were adamant that “enough is enough”.

Lyte attempted to get the gathering to wait until Wednesday to make a decision, however the crowd vehemently maintained that they waited enough and wanted an immediate decision.

This saw Lyte and other executives agreeing to an impromptu meeting held immediately at the GTU compound, where the teachers continuously called for strike action.