Amnesia or indifference?

GUYANA TEACHERS’ UNION (GTU) PRESIDENT MR. MARK LYTE EITHER HAS
A DEFICIENT MEMORY or he is being careless with the truth according to Education
Minister Priya Manickchand.
Manickchand at a recent press briefing recalled meeting multiple times with Lyte and other GTU
executives since her appointment to the learning sector in August 2020 following her coalition
party’s triumph at the polls.
“I met with the Union on August 11, 2020, that was six days after I was sworn in (and) five days
after I took office. That is how important the Guyana Teachers Union as a stakeholder group is
(to me). From then to now we have met six times, and on every occasion, we have had what I
thought and what the union said was productive meetings.”
“One of the first things that we did together was to examine all schools throughout this country
to determine their readiness for reentry into the schools as a result of which we had an action
sheet which we took action to the satisfaction of the union,” the Minister told reporters.
She was taken aback when the teachers’ representative recently staged a surprising protest
alleging little or no consultation between the Ministry and the labour body.
“I have been inviting GTU to a monthly meeting. All other Regional Education Officers (REOs)
have been doing that, they have been inviting the officers for meetings with the exception of
Region Six (East Berbice/Corentyne). We will fix that. We also know that two weeks ago the
Union was invited to be a part of the teacher appraisal…and they refused to come. We sent a
letter to GTU to ask them what they thought about it, and we haven’t gotten an answer,” the
minister explained.
But the union turned up with placards expressing opposition to Minister Manickchand and her
ministry. She found it disheartening and disgusting. According to Manickchand, though there

remain some sticking points between the two sides, the protest was uncalled for because the
coalition A Partnership for National Unity Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) coalition
virtually snubbed the teachers union meeting them a mere four times in its five years in office.
The two sides informally agreed to meet monthly, and according to Manickchand, it was smooth
at the beginning, then GTU started making excuses leading to numerous postponing. She
attributed no malicious intent since both sides were “busy”. But when the GTU Berbice
representative and Lyte claimed being snubbed, yet were present at meetings, she began to think
otherwise.
GTU raised a number of concerns with the education ministry including the date of 14,000
students writing of the National Grade Six tests.
“Teachers are saying to us what they want and what they need. The union’s complaints seem to
be that we must not meet the teachers and speak to them, we must only speak to the union. While
the union is an important stakeholder, they are not, and will not, be the only stakeholder that the
ministry speaks to and or consult with,” the Minister emphasised.
“The union seems to be burying its head in the sand. The union will tell you that they have no
clue that their own members have asked for, and are back into the classrooms. We have been
speaking to teachers, we can’t stop that it is what informs our policies of what we do. It was the
teachers that asked us to put the exam date at the 4 th and 5 th of August. The parents that wanted it
in the second week of August…and we did what the teachers wanted. That again is a non-issue
for protest,” Manickchand, a lawyer by training, explained.
Appearing with Manickchand at the press conference were Chief Education Officer (CEO),
Dr. Marcel Hutson and Permanent Secretary (PS), Mr. Alfred King.