Teachers to get long-overdue payments

PORT AU PRINCE (CMC):

The Ministry of National Education says it is preparing to distribute more than 34,000 cheques to all its staff, teachers and administrative staff throughout Haiti.

It said each of the cheques represents four months of compensation that should have been credited to the debit card the ministry has committed to distributing to all its employees, in accordance with one of the points of the agreement signed with the teachers’ union on January 20, this year.

The agreement effectively ended a strike that had paralysed both public and high schools and was regarded as a major step towards students throughout the country returning to the classrooms.

As part of the agreement, teachers and Education Ministry staff were to receive a debit card in the amount of 15,000 Gourdes (one gourde=US$0.007 cents) from February this year.

The administrative director in the Ministry of Education, Guichard Chéry, said that the ministry had to utilise this option because it did not want to prolong the wait for the teachers, who had been waiting for an advance for more than two months.

The government said that the idea is to provide each public sector teacher with a debit card topped up monthly by the Public Treasury with 15,000 Gourdes.

Minister of Education, Antoine Augustin, said that all departmental directors of education are to take appropriate measures to ensure that the rightful beneficiaries receive the payment and that no one is authorised to receive cheques on behalf of anyone.