Georgetown : After a long period of deliberation and much discrepancy between Government and the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) over the multi-year incentive package for teachers, an agreement has finally been reached much to the satisfaction of both parties.
GTU President Collin Bynoe led the union to a meeting with President Bharrat Jagdeo and Minister of Education Shaik Baksh at the Office of the President today that ended with union members breathing a sigh of relief .
Minister Baksh said the two sides brainstormed the many demands that were made to the existing agreement and by next week the consensus will be fine tuned and concluded once and for all.
The GTU President said,“We made a giant step forward in this process after meeting the President and discussing this issue.”
The multi-year package was signed on October 11, 2006 and initially catered for a five percent per annum across-the-board increase for all categories of teachers and one percent of the wage bill as a performance based increment per annum for eligible teachers.
Other aspects of the agreement included increased remuneration for teachers who have improved their qualifications, an annual clothing allowance of $6,000 per teacher, one-off duty free concession for vehicles for 100 Head Teachers per year, a housing revolving fund of $40M per year, that is, $200M by 2010 to facilitate construction of houses for teachers and 25 Government-sponsored scholarships per year for teachers at the University of Guyana.
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