Re-migrating teachers want jobs back

Education Minister Priya Manickchand

… Govt mulls how to deal with breached contracts

BY ALEXIS RODNEY

Teachers who would have breached their contracts with the Government to pursue lucrative offers overseas could be considered for re-employment, Education Minister Priya Manickchand has said.

She told Guyana Times that with a number of trained teachers returning to Guyana, her Ministry is currently working around a system which could enable them to continue teaching here.

Hundreds of Guyanese teachers had taken up lucrative offers in countries such as The Bahamas, Botswana, The Turks and Caicos Islands and other Caribbean countries. However, a number of them have been returning in recent times and Government sees this as an opportunity to capitalise on their skills. The school system here is still short of qualified teachers and only recently Government has been considering hiring foreigners to teach Mathematics and Science.

Currently, the Education Ministry allows teachers who have breached their contracts, to make payments in the event they wish to return. “What we know is that teachers are re-migrating. And what is under active consideration is how we are going to deal with their contracts,” Manickchand said.

Speaking exclusively to Guyana Times on Tuesday, the Education Minister said she is aware of close to 10 individuals who have indicated their interest in returning to the education system here. These are teachers who had passed through the training offered by the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE), and who had left the jurisdiction without permission from the Ministry or the Teaching Service Commission (TSC).

“The rule is, you have to pay it off before you can begin teaching again”, she told this publication, while noting that the Ministry is also seeking out ways through which those rules could be relaxed, without jeopardising agreements in other service areas.

Many teachers, she said, are lobbying to honour this commitment while they teach. “They are asking for many things like, “please allow me to pay as I teach”, Manickchand reported.

Asked what is being done to prevent teachers from leaving the country, Manickchand explained that contracts are signed, while passports and other travel documents are stamped. She said however, that unlike previous years, fewer teachers are leaving the country.

She recalled that many Guyanese educators had left home when countries like Belize, The Bahamas and Botswana were in desperate need of teachers. That situation has improved, she noted.

Earlier in this year, questions were raised over the millions of dollars being spent on salaries for teachers, who in the past, were known to have left the teaching service. Manickchand had told the National Assembly, that although the situation was obviously a huge issue in the past, her Ministry had put measures in place to address the problem.

Some $35.6 million was said to have been spent to pay teachers who had already exited the system between 2006-2011, the National Assembly had learnt. A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) Member of Parliament (MP) Volda Lawrence had commented that the Education Ministry was expending millions of dollars in overpayment to persons; many of whom would have left the education system.

She questioned what measures the Ministry has in place to stem the “consistent haemorrhage of salaries being paid to persons, who many times, would have left the institution”.

Mancikchand had explained that teachers would leave the job. However, the Ministry would only be notified three months later, while salaries continued to be sent to the banks. She had said too that one would expect that in such cases, “human decency” would dictate that they would return the money, however, based on the Auditor General’s report, the country was let down. She noted that the Ministry had written to some of these individuals, and some had returned and repaid the money.

MP Lawrence also pointed out that a number of people, after getting away with the misdeed, still turn up and receive full payment for monies owed to them, including gratuity, while no deductions are made.