LETTER OF THE DAY - Pay recently trained teachers more
Published:Thursday | June 6, 2013 | 12:00 AM
THE EDITOR, Sir:
I RECENTLY completed my bachelor's degree in teacher education. However, I have been most disheartened, since discovering that when I start teaching in September, I will only be receiving approximately $47,000 monthly after tax, even months after I receive the actual copy of my degree in January 2014. Apparently, this has long been the case for all recently trained teachers, and so I am appealing to the Ministry of Education to review this policy.
I do not think that it is reasonable for newly trained teachers to wait for such a protracted period before they can receive their regular salaries. Certainly, many of us are indebted to the Students' Loan Bureau and will not be able to effectively service our loans and sustain ourselves and our families with the aforementioned salary. In fact, by the time the ministry processes our documents of certification and issues our due compensation and retroactive payment, our student loans would have been greatly increased by the late charges incurred.
Conversely, police officers who undergo training for only three months are immediately remunerated with more than $80,000 monthly when they commence duty.
On the other hand, if the ministry, for some reason, cannot amend its policy, I beg that tertiary institutions expedite the time taken to award the degrees to their students. I would suggest that like the United States of America (since we copy them so very easily) graduations are held in May or June and the actual copies of the degrees are awarded simultaneously so that graduates can move forward with their lives. Suspending graduation until December and then later awarding the diplomas and degrees in January the following year is utterly ridiculous and significantly restricts the mobility of graduates.
We must move forward in efficiently handling our affairs so that tertiary graduates will not be at any great disadvantage when they have completed their courses. There are many of us who complete our diplomas and degrees with the hope that our financial situations will change. However, the harsh reality is that the majority of us remain in great financial distress even years after completing our studies.
We must endeavour to change this and show our children that once they have achieved a tertiary level of education, they can almost immediately elevate their standard of living. Otherwise, we could easily be perpetuating the indifferent attitude that many of our children have towards school.
SHAWNA KAY WILLIAMS