And in a release issued on November 24th, the BNTU raised the issue that several teachers hadn't gotten their salaries since the start of the school year. Today, Fonseca explained what may be the cause of the issue, and encouraged the union to provide the names of the teachers affected to the ministry so that they can deal with the problem.
Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education
"We're not aware of that. Wherever there are teachers who have, there are cases where there are transfers, teachers are transferred from one management to the next and there's required paperwork to reflect that transfer decision, that has to come in, so in some cases there may be a month or so, but in every case, what the ministry does, it requests from the Ministry of Finance an off cycle, what we call an off cycle submission for payment. so if the union has names, they'll need to provide that to the Ministry of Education so we can address them. That's always the case whenever we have these issues there is an established process and procedure for us to address them through the Chief Education Officer or the Chief Executive Officer and on every occasion, the ministry is fully responsive, and the union knows that so we are fully prepared if they have teachers who they are claiming have not received payments, let us know and we will address it."
