And while the nation is still in uproar over the death of the 14-year-old, the churches are upset at the government. On Tuesday, they sent out two releases scolding the government for a number of things, including placing the blame on the school's management for the 10% pay cut of the teachers. That stemmed from a comment the PM made about GOB not being responsible for the cut, but rather they only lessened the amount of money they gave to the management. The management in turn made the decision to cut the pay.
But today the Minister of Education clarified those statements and made it clear that the decision was made by the government.
Hon. Francis Fonseca - Minister of Education
"First of all, let's be very clear, government absolutely values the relationship we have with the churches, I have been a part of 2 meetings along with the prime minister, he and I met with the council of churches, we value their advice, we fully respect our church leaders and certainly as the minister of education I have worked very closely with our church leaders and with the council or churches to implement many of the recommendations that they have made to me as the minister of education over the past 8 months. I think this much to do about nothing, I think there is a misunderstanding in terms of what the prime minister said and how it was received. The government has always made it clear; we were engaged in consultations as you all know for 4 months, we made it very clear to the unions that we were in an economic crisis and that economic crisis demanded that we make tough decisions and one of those tough decisions was that we had to reduce the salaries of our teachers and public officers by 10%. We have never backed away from that, that was a government policy decision, what the prime minister was referring to was the fact that we have been taken to court by the BTNU and in responding to that court case, we had to make it very clear that the process of implementing that 10% salary cut is one that has to be taken through by the managing authorities. The way the government executes that policy decision of a 10% salary reduction is by reducing the grant given to the managing authorities by 10%, so that was the only clarification that was being made. Government took that decision, it was not the managing authorities, the government took the decision to reduce salaries, we take responsibility for that decision."
