The Guyana Teachers’ Union has succeeded in undermining its own capacity to represent the interests of teachers and has made it possible for the Ministry of Education to bypass it. Two days’ ago the Ministry announced it would be taking over the management of a teachers’ scholarship and duty-free concessions programme from the GTU. Fifty scholarships are involved along with 100 duty-free concessions. The reason given was that complaints had been received about the fairness with which the scheme was being administered.
The statement went on to say, “Lately, the complaints have elevated from the mismanagement of the system by the Union to the benefits being used as weapons to threaten teachers to participate in activities organized by the GTU, failing which, members are informed openly and subtly that they will not be a recipient or continuing recipient of a scholarship nor of a duty-free concession. These reports have come from teachers who are duly qualified to receive these benefits.”
The GTU has denied these allegations, accusing the Ministry of telling “blatant lies” and challenging it “to produce evidence of such mismanagement and threats to teachers.” It described the move as a response to the union’s protest action against compulsory vaccination and the non-payment of money owed to teachers. It was, it said, an attempt at union busting. As it pointed out there was an agreement in force between the GTU and the government on the scholarship and concessions, and this would remain until a new one was signed.
It must be said that the allegation teachers were being threatened by the union over benefits if they did not participate in “activities organised by the GTU” (by which the Ministry presumably means protest action) seems highly unlikely. There are hundreds of teachers in Georgetown alone, never mind the not insubstantial total throughout the country among all of whom the 50 scholarships and 100 duty-free concessions have to be divided. In other words, it is only a minuscule number of them who could be pressured on this basis, and these would make little difference to protest numbers.
As for the complaints about the allocations, the Ministry did not say how many it had received, or as the union observed, supply any examples. In addition, the GTU stated that over the years the scholarship committee had included an officer from the Ministry’s Personnel Department. What then, has that official been doing over an extended time frame if all this misallocation was going on?
It might be remarked that it would be truly amazing in a country like this if there had been absolutely no complaints; given the fissures in the society it is inevitably the case that some individuals would persuade themselves they had been overlooked or denied something on nefarious grounds. In any event, what one can be sure about is that the complaints would multiply dramatically if the Ministry of Education were to take over the awarding of scholarships and concessions; it would be to put the matter directly into government’s hands, raising yet again the problem of political control, this time of the teaching profession.
But the Ministry was moving on other fronts too. Earlier this week the Ministry launched the Teachers’ Welfare and Benefit programme. A large number of teachers from all the regions assembled to register with the programme, and these received a card which can be used at several stores and business places which are collaborating with the Ministry. Through this programme teachers will be eligible for discounts on retail goods, healthcare, telecommunications and office supplies, among other things. Then there was the Housing Fund which at the moment, according to Minister Priya Manickchand, stood at $200 million and would be used to benefit teachers. This was in addition to a revolving mortgage fund to assist first-time owners. In sum, what was on offer was a large and varied package.
Minister Priya Manickchand was reported as saying that the Ministry needed to consider how teachers were being treated in order to make them more effective. She adverted to the distrust between the two, but gave them the assurance that the Ministry was supporting them, and would continue to support their development.
So here is the Ministry of Education offering teachers the most promising programme they have seen in many years, and this without the input of the GTU, or any campaign on its part.
The teachers are not going to refuse offers from the Ministry which ease their lives, but that said, there is a sense, as mentioned earlier, in which the union is partly responsible – although not wholly so – for making itself irrelevant to its members’ everyday concerns. Much of its problem arises from the fact that the government sees it as an opposition union, even though the GTU’s relations with the coalition government for much of its period in office were anything but warm, and in 2018 it threatened strike action.
Last week it decided to mount protests against mandatory vaccinations for teachers, and while conceivably a significant number of its members may be opposed to the government on this matter, they were not prepared to come out on the street and demonstrate.
In the first place, the union should have had better feedback from Georgetown teachers especially, before it went this route. The problem is that the matter has become politicised, so the GTU is perceived as doing the work of APNU+AFC, which does not want to come out and protest openly; it prefers to flit like a spectre in the shadows. It would have profited the union far more to have exhorted its members to get vaccinated while verbally registering its opposition to making this compulsory.
In the second place, as has been said before in these columns, as long as the union has a General Secretary who is also an MP for the opposition, inevitably it will be accused of serving political interests, rather than professional ones. The concerns of the teachers in relation to the work they do are not political in character, no matter how they vote. The GTU should not be confusing the political and the professional in the public’s mind, therefore, and if its image is to be restored, Ms Coretta McDonald would be well advised to resign her post in the union she has always served so conscientiously.
In the third place, the GTU has been ill served by at least one highly toxic opposition politician. What MP Sherod Duncan has posted on social media was undoubtedly done independently of the union, but considering the target of his vulgar and offensive post is said to be the Minister of Education, inevitably people will think there is a nexus. Minister Gail Teixeira, for one, has made the connection, writing in a letter to this newspaper that it “illustrates the depths of depravity that permeate PNC/APNU/AFC and Guyana Teachers’ Union circles.”
It has been reported that Mr Duncan posted a song on his Facebook page which among other things reflected gender violence. While what he did raises much larger questions, where the GTU alone is concerned, Ms Teixeira claimed that the lyrics were close renditions of chants used during opposition protests as well as that of the Guyana Teachers’ Union. If it is indeed true that there was inappropriate chanting directed at the Minister of Education during the teachers’ protest, the union should take that in hand right away, and rebuke the offenders. Most of all, it should condemn Mr Duncan’s post publicly and disassociate itself from the contents. Most of its membership, much of which is female, would have been offended by both the song and the chants.
The GTU’s actions have made it much easier for the Ministry to do what the government wants, i.e. take control of the teachers. While it would not be good for teachers if the administration assumed the management of allocating teaching scholarships and concessions; and it would be equally deleterious for them if they were left without recourse to a non-government body to deal with their complaints or promote their interests, the GTU will become miniaturised if it does not take itself in hand. It cannot counter the government’s moves for total political control in the education sector, and particularly the control of teachers, unless for its part it is unequivocally professional and politically non-partisan in its approach.
