Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) delegates will today converge at The Mico University College in St Andrew to make a final decision on Government’s revised wage offer amid growing anger and protests by some educators since last Friday.

The sit-ins and sick-outs staged by teachers resulted in scaled-down activities at schools across the island and in some cases, parents were advised to keep children home.

The Jamaica Observer was told that the protests are likely to continue today.

Efforts to get a comment from JTA President La Sonja Harrison were unsuccessful up to press time on Tuesday. However, a reliable source told the Observer that today’s meeting is to commence at 10:00 am with 1,170 delegates eligible to vote.

Finance and the Public Service Minister Dr Nigel Clarke had told the Observer on Monday that the total retroactive compensation provided for teachers in the third and fourth supplementary estimates is approximately $12 billion, “and this is on hand to be paid to teachers in March 2023”.

On Tuesday, while opening the budget debate, Clarke appealed to teachers and other public sector groups who have not yet signed the new wage agreement to do so.

“Teachers, nurses, firefighters, doctors, police – I know that you deserve more, but the truth is, at this time, I cannot do anymore. We can’t reach the Promised Land in one step. There will be another opportunity before too long to work together on achieving some of the outstanding goals,” he said.

In recent days, scores of teachers have accused the JTA of lobbying poorly on their behalf.

Similar to protests in St Elizabeth on Friday and Monday, placard-bearing teachers in Manchester on Tuesday joined the wave of educators wearing black as they staged sit-ins.

Manchester High, May Day High, Belair High, New Forest High, Mandeville Primary were among schools affected by the protests.

Mandeville Primary School Principal Howard Salmon told the Observer that only 29 per cent of the 61 teachers there turned up for work on Tuesday, resulting in the majority of the 1,500 student population remaining at home for online classes.

“We continue to do our best to facilitate our students to reduce any learning loss in any situation through online engagement, worksheets, face-to-face mode of teaching and learning. I can assure the population that our students will recover from anything as we aim to do so at all times,” he said.

Belair High teacher Patrick Smith, who is also the school’s JTA contact, said teachers “are overworked and underpaid”.

“We believe in a fair wage; the starting point for the trained graduate should be $3 million at least. We want to retain all our allowances and we also want to retain our yearly automatic increment on the scale,” he said.

“The current appraisal is talking about if you are published. What you do in your community, that has nothing to do with what we are hired here to do, which is to teach. So we don’t believe we should move up on the scale based on that requirement. We want to keep our current [arrangement] where we automatically move up the scale every year,” said Smith.

When asked about teachers bashing the JTA, Smith said the association would “need to work in order to regain the teachers’ confidence”.

His colleague, Dwayne Swaby, said teachers are very disgruntled.

“It is common sense. Inflation is very high. Cost of living is very high and our pay is not increasing, so normally our Sunday dinner could go for Monday, now we have to stretch it to Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday; it is the reality,” he said.

“What we want is whoever is in charge — the Government, and the JTA — to have simple common sense; you see how cost of living is. All you need to do is just pay us a little bit more, that is all we are asking,” added Swaby as his colleagues chanted “Liveable income!”

Principal of May Day High School Stanford Davis said a planned consultation with parents was affected by the protests.

“Unfortunately most of the teachers called in sick. Of a staff complement of 65 we have 13 persons here… We met with the parents [and] distributed the reports to the parents,” said Davis, as he watched a cricket match between his school and Port Antonio High at May Day’s playfield.