GEORGETOWN, Guyana - The Ministry of Public Works and Communications notes with great unease, in its view, statements in the press which give an unfair characterization of the reasons and circumstances leading to industrial action, escalating to a strike, of Air Traffic Controllers at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport , Air Traffic Control Tower.
 
While efforts are underway to maintain a satisfactory service to the travelling public the following points need to be stated:

The GCAA is a national semi-autonomous and subvention agency which currently has to make an urgent contribution of an estimated G$120M to a G$780M critical capital procurement and works upgrade programme for Air Navigation Equipment for the ATC tower. The Government of Guyana has already sequestered on GCAA's behalf, G$660M for this critical upgrade which has also been requested by technical staff in the past. The GCAA does not have the ability to pay.
 
Increases in wages and salaries for subvention or semi-autonomous agencies are not necessarily linked to any increases granted by the government to the traditional pensionable public service, particularly so when the wages and salaries enjoyed by a semi-autonomous agency are significantly above that of the traditional public service. GCAA's employees as a group, and by comparative scales, are very well taken care of, all things considered. 

In 2008, the GOG supported payments to the GCAA, which equated three years' "retroactive payment", in an effort to remove any issue of wages and salaries beyond the concern of GCAA employees and it was then indicated that there could be no foreseeable call for increases considering the perilous financial state of the authority.