Dear Editor,
In my letter of 14 – 02 – 24 I wrote: “There is no reference in the reports of the Auditor General up to 2022 to suggest that financial statements of NAACIE were audited in the past five years.” Dr. Tara Singh interpreted this to mean that that the “union did not provide annual financial reports to the Auditor General”. I can only blame myself for my inability to make a simple fact any clearer to a learned doctor.
In the context of his letter (17-02 -24), Dr. Singh seems concerned that I have “lent” support to the striking teachers. I am proud to do so, as I am proud to have gone on the picket line against then UK Education Secretary and later Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher in the early seventies when she took milk away from school children, and in Guyana when I joined with NAACIE and the TUC against political domination of and the misuse of the NIS funds. Or when I joined with the political opposition, and particularly the PPP/C, in the battle against the rigging of the results of the March 2020 elections. I should add that NAACIE gave me a special award for my contribution to the workers and the Union.
It is a sad day for the workers of this country when NAACIE, once the workers’ champion, is silent while the NIS of which GAWU President Seepaul Narine is a Board member, buckles under pressure from the Government, to challenge a Court ruling to award a pension to Sharief Zainul, a 73-year-old former carpenter. I will continue to lend support to Mr. Zainul and others like him, who are deprived of their rights.
Dr. Singh may be comfortable that Government-leaning trade unionists under the FITUG umbrella are the only unionists on the Trade Union Recognition and Certification Board. I hope I do not need to explain to Dr. Singh why this poses a real conflict of interest and also why it is a demonstration of bias, if not petty vindictiveness, on the part of the Government.
In relation to the teachers’ strike, Dr. Singh supports the President’s condescending appeal to the teachers to have patience because the President is “action oriented and delivers on promises.” For Dr. Singh, three and a half years is clearly not enough time for an action-oriented President to keep his promise on the following: the renegotiation of the evil 2016 Petroleum Agreement; the establishment of a Petroleum Commission; the investigation into the Cotton Tree murders; a resolution of the impasse surrounding the offices of the Chancellor and the Chief Justice; no discussion in St. Vincent on the Venezuela border controversy. Or his so-called One Guyana motto.
My final remarks to Dr. Singh. Free collective bargaining is a constitutional right under the Constitution which President Ali swore (much more sacred than a promise) to observe. That process should have begun as soon as possible after he was sworn in. His deliberate failure to act after forty-two months has left the teachers to show him how.
Yours faithfully,
Christopher Ram
