By Halshane Burke
The Ministry of Education is to rectify the discrepancies in salaries to some teachers following the recent adjustment in pay to public sector workers.
President of the Jamaica Teachers' Association La Sonja Harrison has complained that a number of teachers are yet to receive their correct pay due to several anomalies.
Minister of Finance and the Public Service Dr. Nigel Clarke says the issue with the pay for teachers is related to conversion.
"With respect to the anomalies that have been formally raised by the JTA, where they provided a number of examples with pay slips and TRNs and so on, the Transformation Implementation Unit having checked each of those that were provided, there were no anomalies in any of them in terms of the calculations. However, in some instances, there were conversion discrepancies, and those conversion discrepancies have been pointed out for the Ministry of Education to address them," he outlined in the House of Representatives on Wednesday.
Dr. Clarke said the number of affected teachers for whom the JTA provided details is between 15 and 25 people.
The Finance Minister said anomalies are still being worked out with other public sector groups but the issue affecting some teachers is unique to that group.
"There are a number of matters that we continue to discuss with the confederation and with other unions, and the best place for that discussion is around a conference table with them. This is a three-year implementation. We're only a year and a half in, so we still have a year and a half to go, and a number of other things to get done and finalised, including the performance element and other elements," he noted.
Dr. Clarke said wage talks have been concluded with 135 of the 145 groups within the public sector.
