Arguing that the government’s reasoning is sound, Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Anil Nandlall, SC on Tuesday emphasised that teachers’ salary increases for years gone cannot be discussed now.
Instead, he said the government can negotiate and hopes to discuss salary increases for 2024.
“The reason is more commonsensical than anything else. The government operates in a budgetary cycle so what has passed, has passed.”
“The government has no budgetary resources to increase wages that have long gone,” Nandlall explained Tuesday night during his weekly ‘Issues in the News’ programme.
The Attorney General tackled the negotiations between the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) and the Education Ministry during this programme. Earlier Tuesday, talks between the two sides collapsed as the Education Ministry officials said the Union’s proposal for increases and benefits from 2019 to 2023 could not be discussed.
The Education Ministry, however, noted that it was keen on addressing 2024 increases and other matters identified by both sides.
Nandlall contends that teachers, like other public sector workers, benefitted from across-the-board salary increases announced by the government in the years gone. This, he said, further evidences why the government is now unable to engage in salary increase talks for the 2019 to 2023 period.
After the talks collapsed, GTU President Mark Lyte said the Union will go back to the Court.
Through a mediation process ordered by High Court Judge Sandil Kissoon earlier in March, the Government and the GTU came to a mutual agreement for striking teachers to return to their classrooms on or before Wednesday, March 06. This meant that the nationwide industrial strike which commenced on February 05, 2024 was called off as it entered its fifth week.
Lyte hopes the Court will support the Union’s case but Nandlall believes the ongoing court case will help to settle several issues including whether the government can legally deduct payments from teachers who were on strike (as it planned to do) and whether the government is indeed not legally bound to continue collecting and paying GTU dues from the teachers on behalf of the Union.
“To me, these are very clear and simple issues and they are misunderstood in this country… In my view, the law is clear and the matter is settled so we need to have these matters clarified once and for all in this country,” Nandlall said.
