Several teachers at George Headley Primary still not paid

By Kimone Witter    

 

Principal of George Headley Primary School, Aretha Willie, says with the continued silence from the Ministry of Education on when five new teachers will be paid their September salaries, the school will have to pull funds from its coffers to cover their expenses.

 

Mrs. Willie said her salary had also not been transferred to her bank account up Monday morning. 

 

"I asked the teachers to hold strain until today to see if some time between Friday and the weekend they would have been paid. I just checked myself, we have not been paid. So we have no recourse but to pay that from school coffers until the ministry pays them, and pays me," the principal said in an update on the Morning Agenda, on Power 106. 

 

The Corporate Area school welcomed seven new hires at the start of the academic year, but only two received their salaries this month. Of eight returning teachers, six were paid.

 

There has been no explanation from the Education Ministry.

 

Mrs. Willie said the late payment of September salaries is nothing new and educators are duly sensitised. But she said it is an almost yearly occurrence, which ought not to have been normalised. 

 

"When I entered the system 30 odd years ago, fortunately for me, I was employed in a secondary school with a bursar-paid situation. So that was a given. But once you are paid directly from the ministry back in the day, your first paycheck would have been January or December. It is a little better now, in that it might be October. Rarely is it ever in September. As a matter of fact... a person wrote on Facebook, 'Mrs Willie, when you ever hear new teacher get paid in September? And that ought not to be. We have normalised this thing," she complained.