MONTEGO BAY, St James — Trade unionist and head of the Hugh Lawson Shearer Trade Union Education Institute Danny Roberts says the local governance of the education sector is “seriously trespassed upon” in the recent agreement between Jamaica and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“We are once again being dictated to by external forces… For inside the IMF agreement are detailed policy measures about freezing the hiring of new teachers in schools that are overstaffed. Was the JTA part of any discussion about this? What right does the IMF have to dictate and the Government to capitulate that there must be mandatory redeployment of teachers through the enactment of legislation by 2015/2016, if voluntary redeployment is not working?” Roberts questioned.

“When you scrutinise this agreement, only education, as a sector, has been subject to the level of intrusiveness in the governance and management of our affairs as a sovereign and independent nation,” said Roberts.

He argued that clauses of the IMF deal which were struck, without any input of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA), represents “an assault on the principle of free collective bargaining.

“Many of those matters appearing in the IMF agreement have been the subject of a collective labour agreement between the JTA and the Ministry of Education. That makes it sacrosanct, and by words and deeds the sanctity of the JTA agreement with the Ministry of Education must be preserved and protected,” Roberts said.

“I see no matter on imports finding its way in the IMF agreement; I see nothing about the size of the Cabinet, about the health sector, about national security, about climate change, but education is singled out as part of the ‘project’, and a global campaign is being waged against teachers’ unions,” he said.

Roberts was delivering the keynote address yesterday on the opening day of 50th staging of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) Annual General Conference, which will take place over three days at the Hilton Rose Hall Hotel and Spa.

Blaming economic aid as the main cause behind the IMF’s intrusion of the educational sector, the trade unionist said that “as a country we have grown so dependent on economic aid that we are now trapped in a vicious cycle. But what is worse is the psychology of it all, this feeling that we are hapless, incapable of managing our own affairs, and must be governed and dictated to by the very forces that many years ago ruled by plunder and conquest. Have we squandered our independence and sovereignty?”

Roberts, at the same time, charged the JTA to collaborate with the minister of education to reform the educational system for the better, but he said that it should not be at the risk of surrendering “our future to the project of neo-liberals”.