GTU President advocating for better wages, benefits for teachers

May 06, 2014 News

The time has come for teachers to be treated as the pillars for the nation’s development rather than merely as second class citizens. This assertion was made by recently appointed President of the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU), Mark Lyte.
This level of treatment meted out to teachers is especially noticeable when teachers’ remuneration is considered, Lyte observed.
Even without examining the rate of pay of teachers in Caribbean territories, the GTU President said that the important factor that needs to be carefully examined is, “what is a liveable wage? We have not gone to the drawing board to find out exactly what that should be but we have some ideas,” Lyte disclosed.
It is the view of the GTU President that a trained teacher should be able to take home, at the least, around $80,000 to $100,000. At the moment, he said that a trained teacher takes home less than $70,000.
The position of head teacher on the other hand, depending on the grade of the school, attracts a salary between $140,000 and $170,000 gross salary, according to Lyte. “When the tax is taken from that your net is just about $120,000 and you are asked to do all the administrative work, manage, plan and all of that…We all know what the cost of living is like here in Guyana,” Lyte noted.
“When we consider the amount of training teachers have to go through as compared with other professions it is just a disadvantage,” intimated the GTU President.
Moreover, Lyte, during an interview with this publication, assured that “we are going to negotiate very hard for our teachers; once the Ministry doesn’t reach the expectation of teachers under my leadership we are going to take the necessary actions.”
According to him, teachers must not only be verbally acknowledged for the important role that they play but their remuneration should also reflect how much they are appreciated. A teacher for close to two decades, Lyte asserted “we are responsible for doctors, nurses, engineers, presidents, prime ministers and yet we are treated like second class citizens.”
Lyte disclosed that among the issues of concern on his agenda, as the new GTU President, is to earnestly discuss the welfare of teachers with officials at the Ministry of Education. He noted that although some pressing matters are already gaining the Ministry’s attention, they have not all been fully implemented.
Among these, he disclosed, is a move towards de-bunching of salaries paid to teachers. The de-bunching of monies, he disclosed, is one that aims to ensure that while teachers are of the same status their years of experience should see them being on a different salary scale.
“For example an Assistant Master or Mistress might have been trained 10 years ago but gets the same salary as someone who was trained a year ago…We would like to see some sort of a (salary) difference between them,” Lyte noted.
Added to this, he said that the GTU, under his tenure, will also be advocating for the realisation of the revolving low-interest house loan for teachers that is yet to be disbursed. Lyte spoke of plans to negotiate for more duty free concessions for teachers to procure vehicles with a view of ensuring that more categories of teachers could benefit.
Currently the duty free concession is granted to senior teachers such as head masters/mistresses and deputy head masters/mistresses but, according to Lyte, “We realise that some teachers will never become heads of school or even deputy heads but they have been in the system for a very long time and so we hope to negotiate for them to benefit too.”

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GTU President advocating for better wages, benefits for teachers

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