By Adama Makasuba
Teachers have been urged to remain calm amid the row over government pay scale as union stepped in to solve the issue described as ‘unofficially discriminatory pay scale.’
Essa Sowe deputy general secretary of Gambia Teachers Union said: “well for the essence of representation I want them to continue exercising restraint and decorum and make sure that they allow the secretariat and the office of the general secretary and the national executive to lead them in this.”
“But what we can say is that we want to assure them that as far as we are concerned, what we thought in our initial preliminary analysis is right, certainly we will seek for justice. Let them be rest assured that the union is conscious and concerned about what it has seen and we will follow due process to make sure that the right thing is done and we will actually do the needful,” he added.
According to him, the debate is necessitated by the fact that is an apparent discrimination literally between teachers and a particular sector, adding comparatively these are people who either studied from the same university or college or acquired literally the same degree or qualification.
“We have not gotten to that point yet because as a union we ought to be professional so as a result we are doing lots of professional engaging to ensure that we exhaust all local remedy. What I mean here is the first thing we did was to find out in the first place as to how the purported pay scale has been officially communicated to. For instance, if you take the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education there has not been any official correspondent to the effect regards to the actual pay scale. So, as a result we are doing some analysis and demanding some clarification,” Mr Sowe said.
“If you telling me that a particular diploma programme or certificate programme is to be placed for example grade seven or grade eight and then a graduate from the teaching be placed on grade six that’s difficult to perceive. So, these are very simple analysis a layman can do and see justice and we accommodate that. So, what we can say is for certain is that if what we assume if the assumptions are right then we have a very big concern and then we are not settling for anything other than a redress,” he disclosed.
