Government Secures Additional Funds for Teacher Increments, Delays Blamed on Pending Appraisals

As it relates to the pending increments for teachers, the government has had to find additional monies to honor what is owed to the teachers.  The delay, according to Minister Fonseca, is the appraisals yet to be submitted.

Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education: “We’re hopeful that in the month of December we can get most of it done you know but the bottom line is that I think everybody feels that it will take probably about two more months to finalize everything. Certainly hundreds of thousands and by the time we get to the end it could be millions. Yes, yes we have we’ve had to find that money but you know we understand how important it is.”

Reporter: It speaks well though –

Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education: “Yeah we’ve cleared up as I said five to six years and we still have 22 and 23 to finalize but it’s a commitment obviously that the government has to our teachers.”

Reporter: It’s interesting that we just heard about this income tax backlog issue now under this administration but it’s been going on for so long.

Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education: “Yeah I think we ourselves were alarmed when we found out about it so I think we raised it and so it’s very unfortunate but we have an obligation to resolve it and that’s what we’re doing.”

We will follow up with the BNTU on Monday for an update with its membership.