Government should re-employ the Teachers

Fri, Dec 9. 2011

Editor: I have not felt this way about any government action since 1998. This feeling has welled up in me since October, when I realised that the teachers who contested the 2010 General Elections for the NDP were not going to be rehired.{{more}} I do not know why this feeling of disgust, anger, sympathy, and revulsion has engulfed me so intensely, but it has. Therefore, I feel compelled to vent my feelings in the public domain.

I am of the opinion that there were vacancies which Messrs Johnson, Daniel and Thomas could have filled in schools at the commencement of this school term, and I believe that senior public servants knew about the vacancies. I do not know how they feel as “Christians” to know that there were vacancies. However, because of partisan politics, the men were denied the opportunity to continue to contribute to our educational advancement and thereby provide for their families’ economic wellbeing.

They are doing something which I believe will forever be a blot on their consciences. When the table turns and poetic justice takes it course, they will remember how they had helped to starve their fellow Vincentians (retribution comes to us sometimes in disguise). I hope that the NDP does not treat any of them as they are treating these three gentlemen. It is nothing more than a diabolical act. I know I would not have liked this to happen to Elvis Charles had the shoes been on the other foot.

While I am at it, do the Civil Service Orders apply to the teacher who was sitting on the platform at the ULP convention on Sunday, November 27, 2011? Would it have been O.K. if a teacher sat on the NDP platform the previous Sunday? Just wondering whether the 1970 regulations, which were used to ask the teachers to resign, apply to her? Do they apply to the other teacher who also regularly appears on Star Radio?

We must operate by principle, and I believe as a nation we will have a greater level of unity among our people. I wish every religious leader could speak out on this blatant wrong (refusal to re-employ the three teachers) that is stalking the land and will inevitably result in the closure of the education system for a period of time.

I end with a quote from William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones…” My hurt for these gentlemen is palpable and goes beyond the party which I vote for, the ULP.

Retired Teacher