Last week Wednesday ITVET instructors were up in arms about their salaries not being paid since September. The Minister of Education told us today that they have since resolved the issue and have taken steps to ensure that there's no recurrence. He told us more about what they did.
Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education
"In the case of the ITVET here in Belize city again that's a long-standing challenge but we were able to resolve that issue on Friday last week Friday finally get up-to-date with the payments as we know I talked about this at the national assembly on Friday. It is not that the teachers are not being paid, they were getting money through the ITVET in Belize city but we had not gotten the money from the ministry of finance as yet to pay them so the IT vet in Belize city with support from the ministry was giving them money that now has to be reimbursed but they were getting paid and now what we have done is put them on the SmartStream system so that this problem does not occur and again we have been looking at the contract since situation the whole challenge with the ITVETs is the contracts which are annual contracts one year contracts, so we are looking at that to try to expand and extend those contracts but the main thing is that it has been resolved as of last week Friday and as I said, we are now putting them on the SmartStream system so that this problem should not reoccur."
