Education Minister Andrew Holness Friday made an impassioned plea to the island’s public sector teachers to accept the Government’s current wage offer and apologised for recent comments made by Finance Minister Audley Shaw which stopped just short of calling the teachers’ demand unreasonable.

Last week, Shaw reportedly intimated that the teachers’ demand for retroactive monies was unreasonable, given the poor results among students in the recent Grade Four Numeracy Test. At the time, Jamaica Teachers’ Association President Michael Stewart described the comments as “unkind” and labelled them as an attempt by the minister to compare oranges and apples.

Shaw’s comments came as the teachers were engaged in a two-day strike to press their demand for Government to pay up the $4 billion in retroactive monies due to them this year. Government is insisting it cannot pay more than $1 billion now, and is asking the teachers to accept the remaining sums over the next three years in keeping with the terms of an agreement signed with the International Monetary Fund. In all, the teachers are owed $8 billion, but half of that sum is due this year.

Source: The Sunday Observer

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