February 6, 2024
Georgetown, Guyana.
For immediate release to all media houses.
PRESS RELEASE
The AFC strongly condemns Government’s announcement that it will not deduct union dues for the Guyana Teachers Union.
The Alliance For Change (AFC) strongly condemns Government’s announcement that it will not act as an agent and deduct union fees from wages and salaries of teachers who are members of the Guyana Teachers Union. The AFC considers this a deliberate and vindictive response to the teachers strike currently underway which the Government considers illegal.
The AFC is alarmed at government’s failure to uphold the right to legitimate protest, the individual’s right to strike and has concluded these actions all signal the Death of Democracy in PPP Guyana. The government is not interested Collective Bargaining and in finding a meaningful solution to the concern raised by teachers through their union over the last four years.
The AFC also notes the duplicity of this Government who have caste the protest as “political” given that the secretary of the Guyana Teachers Union is a Member of Parliament on the opposition side.
This PPP government has conveniently forgotten that the President of the Guyana Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU) has always been a PPP Member of Parliament. The late Komal Chand served for 32 years in the position and now the current President Seepaul Narine is a Member of Parliament.
The Guyana Sugar Worker Union (GAWU) has staged the most strikes in Guyana over the last 40 years, at least 10 strikes per year and that union was never threatened with having their union dues withheld and the hundreds of GAWU strikes were never deemed political by the PPP.
The Alliance For Change upholds that all workers deserve representation and teachers must earn livable wage which Guyana can afford to pay the from the $ 1.6 billion Guyana dollars per day we are currently earning from oil production.
End.
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