SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth — Immediate past president of the Jamaica Teachers Association (JTA), Clayton Hall has his own vision of how teachers’ objection to aspects of the proposed Jamaica Teaching Council Bill should be dramatised.

Hall told colleagues at the recent half-yearly meeting of the St Elizabeth Parish Association that when ongoing consultations with teachers regarding offending aspects of the Bill are completed, a petition should be delivered to Education Minister Ronnie Thwaites at his offices on Heroes Circle in Kingston. Hall painted a verbal picture of teachers dressed in black, walking from the JTA headquarters at 97B Church Street to deliver the petition at the Ministry of Education about a half-mile away.

“I want when the first teacher reaches Heroes Circle, the last teacher in the line should not as yet left 97B Church Street,” said Hall to delighted and prolonged applause from the packed St Matthew’s Anglican Church Hall.

In a 40-minute address, Hall reiterated the several objections teachers have in relation to the long debated Bill which, when passed, is intended to regulate the teaching profession.

Teachers say that aspects of the proposed legislation, described by Hall as “atrocities”, would among other injustices deny teachers due process in disciplinary hearings; disenfranchise teachers in decision making; and adversely affect their tenure and well-being as professionals. Teachers want the Bill withdrawn until their concerns are suitably addressed.

Noting that politicians “hear just one voice, the voice of votes”, Hall urged his colleagues in St Elizabeth to use all means of communication to “ensure that our voices are heard in a very strong and potent manner”.

They had a responsibility not just to themselves as professionals but to future teachers and to the education system to ensure the proposed legislation is revamped, he said.

“We have a responsibility in the same way Paul Bogle marched from Stony Gut into Spanish Town to ensure … that the atrocities now being proposed are not forever etched on the backs of future teachers,” said Hall.

A resolution unanimously endorsed at the meeting argued that:

* the Jamaica teaching Council Bill, if it were to be enacted in its current form, would not allow for due process to be followed in the hearing of disciplinary matters and therefore would result in a breach of natural justice;

* the recommendation that of 25 members of the proposed council’s board, only six would be practising or registered teachers, would mean that the supervisory body would be “dominated by non-teachers”;

* the power of the council to suspend, revoke or cancel licences or registration would be too arbitrary;

* as proposed, teachers would be left bearing the brunt of the cost of running the council, causing severe financial hardship; and

* informal hearings proposed in the Bill, which would have teachers responding to disciplinary charges without legal representation, would constitute a denial of basic civil rights.

The St Elizabeth teachers rejected the Jamaica Teaching Council Bill in its present state and urged the JTA to ask that the Government withdraws or discards the Bill until all concerns are addressed.