Educators fuming over non-payment of salaries
Published:Tuesday | November 9, 2021 | 12:09 AM
Some educators have been left fuming over the non-payment of their monthly salaries since September.
The issue has affected teachers in schools across the island, with up to 15 teachers at one institution owed by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information (MoEYI), Linvern Wright, president of the Jamaica Association of Principals of Secondary Schools, told The Gleaner.
The affected teachers were promised, in a communique from the ministry, that they would receive the outstanding sums by October 28 – to allow for both missed pay cycles to be handled in one. However, having missed the deadline to settle with some of the teachers, the MoEYI has since promised to pay the outstanding amounts by the end of this month, one principal of a St Andrew-based high school, who spoke with The Gleaner on condition of anonymity, said.
The Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) puts the count at “over a hundred teachers”.
The Gleaner contacted some of the affected schools, such as Edith Dalton James, which reported that 16 teachers did not get their salaries, but was told that the principal was unavailable to speak.
Anchovy High, with 15 teachers not paid for varying months, also gave a similar response - the unavailability of the principal to speak.
Non-bursar-paid schools – those that rely on the ministry to pay teachers – were the ones affected, Wright told The Gleaner.
“The bursar-paid schools were OK, because many principals just went ahead and paid their teachers,” Wright said
“The greater problem is that teachers are now complaining that they have been getting calls to say their loans are in arrears, and these are teachers who are permanent fixtures in the set-up, so this kind of thing should not be happening to them. They would have been in the system a long time, and deductions would have been going on for them for a long time,” JTA President Winston Smith told The Gleaner.
Newly elected President of the Jamaica Association of Principals and Vice-Principals and principal of The Queen’s School, Jennifer Williams, also confirmed that teachers at schools represented in the association’s membership of over 120, were impacted by the non-payment of salaries.
But, “I am also aware that the ministry is dealing with the matter,” she said.
Up to press time, the MoEYI had not responded to The Gleaner’s queries regarding the issue.
The issue of non-payment or late payment of teachers has dogged the MoEYI for years, with the school administrators calling on the ministry to fix the challenges once and for all.
Many senior teachers, after being appointed, wait in excess of eight months to be paid at the new scale. Furthermore, many have had to wait years for retroactive monies owed to them by the ministry, while newly appointed teachers do not begin to get paid until two to five months after beginning their employment, some teachers, who asked not to be named, have informed The Gleaner.
“We have made representation to the ministry, but we have not seen any move on it, to be honest. I have been in meetings where the two principals’ associations have spoken about it, but no satisfactory movement [thus far],” Wright said.
For one Manchester-based teacher: “When I just started working, I went three months without getting paid. This resulted because I just went into the system, and the regional office did not submit the documentation on time.”
The non-payment meant she was “stressed out, broke and had to borrow money” to offset her expenses while she waited to be paid, she said, adding that she also owed rent and was late in paying her loans. “It was really hard,” the teacher said.
The MoEYI has said that issues with the documentation for new teachers as well as system glitches have accounted for the payment issues.
Another Manchester-based teacher told The Gleaner that she waited five months before being paid, and experienced similar financial hardships.
“I eventually went to another school to teach and I was worried that I would have to endure the same thing. But that experience was much better, because I got paid the same month I started,” she said.
“It is poor customer relations and no apology can satisfy this,” principal of Old Harbour High School Linton Weir said of the MoEYI’s tardiness in paying teachers.