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Jagdeo beats around the bush on meeting with GTU for salary negotiations for teachers
Kaieteur News – Vice President (VP) Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday dodged questions on whether the government will at some point engage the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) to negotiate increase in salaries and other co0nditions.
Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo
The VP instead claimed that the government has met about 60 percent of the union’s demands as it relates to creating better working conditions for teachers. “Not everything has to be about wages, it could be about training of teachers, scholarships for teachers, it should be about housing for teachers. The 100 billion we spend on house lots, teachers will also benefit from that, the road we build for communities teachers will also benefit from that…” Jagdeo told a press conference even as the GTU marked day four of its planned nationwide teacher strike and protest action. The GTU has been lobbying the government for improved wages for teachers.
However, when he was asked about the 50 percent increase which he, [the Vice President] lobbied for, for teachers, while he was in Opposition, Jagdeo told the press that the public needs to forget about the 50 percent, since his government has been engaging union on other important matters.
“Forget the 50 percent; they [the union] couldn’t even meet with APNU, Coretta McDonald said it herself…. They had more engagements with us than they had under APNU… So I have great credibility with that and I have numbers to show.”
Further defending the decision to not to engage the union in the collective bargaining process, the VP said that the PPP-led government now views the union as a political tool. Jagdeo asserted: “Now that I had chance to go through in great detail with the state of the union with this state of affairs this is not a credible body anymore. This seems to be a corrupt body and a political unit…”
The Vice President also sought to defend the ministry‘s position to stop remitting teacher monthly dues to the union. According to Jagdeo, the remittance of dues was a courtesy that the government extended to the union. “So now, we are not going to support anyone who is going to divide our people for a political reason,” he added.
Govt. has means to pay teachers better
Meanwhile, in a statement on Thursday, the A Partnership for National Unity and Alliance for Change (APNU/AFC) Opposition party, noted that with prudent management of the country’s financial resources, it is entirely feasible and possible to allocate more funds to dedicated public servants, including, teachers, nurses, doctors and disciplined servicemen and women.
The APNU/AFC noted that a careful analysis of the government’s recurrent expenditure, which is where wages and salaries are catered for in the budget, reveals significant room for optimization and reallocation of resources to pay all public servants a significant increase. “The current regime’s recurrent expenditure in 2024 amounts to $480 billion, a substantial sum. By scrutinising budget lines and identifying areas of with excessive expenditure… it becomes evident that prudent management can yield substantial savings without compromising essential services or benefits.” “For instance, if we maintain certain budget lines at their 2023 levels, where justified, or even consider a 5% increase, we could redirect approximately $20 billion towards improving the lives of hardworking taxpayers in Guyana. This can be achieved without imposing undue strain on the overall budget sum of $1.146 trillion,” the Opposition party posited in its statement.
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