The teachers' strike continued countrywide yesterday and the Guyana Teachers' Union (GTU) announced further action for March 19 and March 20 as they press for additional increases to their 2002 salaries
Yesterday the stalemate between the union and the Ministry of Education continued, with neither side giving any sign of moving ahead with the salary issue for 2003 given that the GTU says it will not enter talks until increases in salaries for 2002 have been brought to a satisfactory closure through arbitration.
The Ministry of Education has stated that arbitration for salaries for 2002 was out of the question since the ministry had already paid increases for that year.
Contacted on a report in another section of the media that the GTU had indicated a willingness to start negotiations for increases in 2003 salaries, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education Hydar Ally said he had been misquoted by the reporter. Ally had earlier written the union asking that the ministry and the union start negotiations early for the current year.
In other developments Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon yesterday told reporters at his post-Cabinet press briefing that the possible reactions/ responses being contemplated by the Ministry of Education were to advise regional education authorities to withhold wages and salaries from striking teachers for the period they were/are on strike and also for them to "examine the conduct of head teachers who locked out teachers and students from the institutions."
During visits to several city schools, Stabroek News had observed that some gates were padlocked.
However, when contacted by telephone one head teacher told this newspaper that she had locked the gates for security reasons. Having no adequate security and with a few teachers in the school and some children preparing for examination, she said she could not leave the gates open with the kind of crimes being committed.
In his briefing to Cabinet, Dr Luncheon quoted Minister Dr Henry Jeffrey as saying that "the GTU was behaving irresponsibly and engaged in rather uncharacteristic adventurism." He said Jeffrey had noted "the plight of many teachers who are being locked out by school authorities and equally the plight of the schoolchildren, many of whom are being denied an opportunity to achieve milestones in their academic and school careers."
In that context, Dr Jeffrey, he said, "decried the clearly unwarranted and unilateral abandonment of the Ministry of Education/GTU partnership on amateur sports athletics management."
Meanwhile in a statement to teachers issued to the media, the GTU reiterated its call to teachers to ignore the Ministry of Education's "empty threats."
The statement signed by GTU President Sydney Murdock said that of the 1,500 house lot forms submitted to the Ministry of Education not one had been acted on; that all teachers still paid for their children's CXC examinations; no teacher had received Whitley Council leave allowance to date and that many teachers were paying off loan advances.