Yesterday you heard the Minister of Education say that the "missing monies" that the BNTU has reported is just a case of miscommunication. Well, last night, the BNTU president Nadia Caliz took to social media to say that somebody misrepresented the situation when he was being briefed.
Caliz explained that while there are teachers who have not gotten their salary for some months, many more teachers have reported that money has been deducted from their salary. Minister Oscar Requena explained yesterday that they were given advances of their allowances and were expected to pay back. He said that the teachers were probably just not informed properly. But according to Caliz, that wasn't the deal at all.
Nadia Caliz, President, BNTU
"First of all I have to make it known that while majority of the teachers were paid, we still have teachers who were not paid in September, who were not paid in October and for some of them, they haven't seen their vacation pay at all so they did not get the July, the June, the September, the October. No lies, no exaggeration."
"I don't know where my dear minister got his facts from because I am shocked, I'm irritated as a matter of fact for us now nationally, globally to exact to be told that your increment, your outstanding allowances was an advance when the ministers of government came out and said the teachers will be given their increment and stuff before the 31st of December. That came from them."
"The BNTU negotiating team did not go into any meeting agreeing to you all getting any advance in December. The conversation was about you all getting your outstanding increments and allowances. Now somebody messed up along the way, somebody lied along the way, somebody lied to the minister along the way. Somebody shifted this whole thing. We met with the Ministry of Education senior management team including the minister on the 17th of December. In that meeting we brought to their attention that taxes will not bw deducted if they go through the managements. They responded they worked all of that out. Later on, we found out that was not so. They explained to us that they would have to withhold some of it back from the teachers in January and February when they explained that to us we explained that to you all but I am very unhappy with the fact that they chose not to share that with the BNTU, they chose not to share that with you but now they're out there publicly calling this an advance? I'm calling on all the media houses, go pull up your clippings and see what they said back then. And some teachers, they are seeing multiple deductions, something is wrong."
