Dear Editor,
I read with concern Salome Hooper’s letter captioned “Education authorities requiring teacher to apply for official release although not attending university in school hours ” (08.01.01) . It is my understanding that after school hours a teacher is free to pursue additional studies and this is not supposed to be dictated by the Ministry of Education. I cannot understand why her salary would be withheld if she would have worked. To do so would be to violate the Labour Act and I would urge her to write the Minister of Labour and the Chief Labour Officer.
I have never heard about any policy mandating teachers to study only Education at UG, when the Ministry of Education does not recognize Education alone.
This is another issue which demands a public response from the Guyana Teachers’ Union. This response should either come from the president of the union Mr Colwyn King, the general secretary, Ms Coretta McDonald or the regional vice President Berbice, Colin Bynoe.
I hope that for the New Year the union would not continue to give a warped interpretation of the GTU’s constitution (rule 16 to be exact) and ask any employee to respond as it did in the case of the Dookie matter. I trust that the union will not say that Ms Hooper is not a member and therefore it cannot respond when the GTU currently gets a $5,000.000 subvention from the Government of Guyana.
I would also like the union to say why it has not supported the GTUC over the Critchlow Labour College subvention. This is really strange since Ms. McDonald is a Vice president of the TUC with responsibility for Education. The GTU is yet to make a public statement regarding this matter.
It would also be interesting to find out why the GTU agreed for increases for teachers to be paid in November 2007. This meant that some teachers did not have any money to spend at Christmas.
What are its views on VAT? When does it intend to review the current salary agreement, until 2009? Why could GTU not ask for increases to be paid in December?
This year is an election year for GTU and after elections the teachers will be worse off, when one considers the persons running for the various positions.
They are divided into two groups; one group signed one of the worst salary agreements in the history of the union and the other group sat silently and allowed it to happen.
Yours faithfully,
Michael Sinclair
