Latest update May 25th, 2026 12:35 AM
‘We are not paid the salary we deserve’- Teachers
Kaieteur News – Two secondary school teachers on Tuesday said that they are overworked and under paid. The teachers said they have been waiting for a long time to receive salaries they deserve but all they have gotten are empty promises.
A Teacher’s Discount Card
Speaking with this newspaper Andray Haynes, a math teacher at St. John’s College said that for being a certified educator with a university degree, the wage he is being paid is not even enough to cover his monthly expenses.
“I went to University, with doctors, engineers, lawyers and I could tell you the person that graduated same time with me received their bachelor’s degree and worked in the Agriculture Ministry, within a couple of years his salary triumph mine by $100,000,” Hanes said noting that teachers are grossly underpaid.
“I had to take up a part-time job just to make ends meet,” Haynes said while noting that the money he takes home is insufficient to take care of his bills as a single father of one.
Adding to his woes of surviving on a low salary, Haynes said that the cost of living in the country is too high and even a discount card given to him and other teachers by the government in 2021 is useless because none of the supermarkets recognize it.
“I never used it, since it came out; it is still in my wallet, because if I show certain places the card, they don’t even know what it is,” a frustrated Haynes said.
Kaieteur News understands that the ministry had promised to send teachers a list of the business places that would accept the discount card but they never did.
Teachers protesting for higher salaries in front of the Ministry of Finance.
“As known, Guyana has enough resources to drop the cost of living and that wouldn’t just benefit teachers only, but every citizen of Guyana,” Haynes told this Newspaper.
Meanwhile, another teacher Kalehia Johnson, in a letter published in Monday’s edition of the Kaieteur News said that teachers are grossly underpaid in Guyana.
In the letter titled to ‘The Other Side to Teaching’ Johnson wrote, “…Teachers give so much of themselves to the profession that many ponder why the salary is often so poor in several countries”.
Recently, several teachers joined representatives of the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) to protest for higher salaries. They had staged their protest in front the Ministry of Finance’s Office on Main Street, Georgetown.
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