And we also asked the Fin Sec about the matter of teachers' salary "advances" being deducted. Many teachers complained that hundreds of dollars were taken out of their accounts in a single deduction. Former Education Minister Oscar Requena had lashed out at the school managements, blaming them for the miscommunication between the ministry and the teachers.
And today, the Fin Sec echoed similar sentiments.
Joseph Waight, Financial Secretary
"It's a long and and torturous situation. The Treasury is at the end of the line. It is like trying to stop, if I can use this expression, if you trying to stop a flood, you don't go to the New Haulover Bridge and stop it there. You do the mitigation upstream. And really, as far as I understand, the difficulty was that some of the school managements know the managements are you know, we have this denominational system. Some of the management records weren't up to date. and last year, in an effort to head off a problem, we gave those teachers that were an advance with the intention that the advance would be recovered over a period of time because the salary would come in once the thing is corrected the salary came in and it took a while for the advance to be recovered. And I understand that when the advance was being recovered, that caused some friction. But Treasury, we all working together to try to minimize and to avoid these problems in the future. But it starts upstream not pointing blame or anything, but the managements have to submit in time all the records and any changes in, you know, status, increments, whatever. Because by the time it gets to the Treasury, the Treasury isn't the gatekeeper."
