Minister Fonseca Assures IT-VET Teachers of Timely Payments

Last week, instructors at the Belize City IT-VET called the media to say that their salaries were not being paid by the Ministry of Education since September. The instructors said that it was the institution itself that was meeting their salaries each month. Some of them had issues with that fact, as well as the contracts they have with the ministry. But since then, the Ministry’s C.E.O. has told News Five that the matter has been resolved and today, the Minister of Education, Francis Fonseca, assured the instructors that their salary issues are a thing of the past.

Francis Fonseca

Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education

“In the case of the ITVET here in Belize City, again, that’s a long-standing challenge. But we were able to resolve that issue on Friday last week Friday, Finally, we’re up to date with the payments. I talked about this in the National Assembly on Friday. It is not that the teachers were not being paid; they were getting monies through the IT-VET in Belize City. But they had not – we had not gotten the money from the Ministry of Finance as yet to pay them. So the IT-VET in Belize City through the support of the ministry was giving them money that now has to be reimbursed. But they were getting paid, and now what we have done is put them on the smart stream system, so that this problem does not reoccur. And again we’ve been looking at the contract situation. The whole challenge with this with IT-VET is the contracts which are annual contracts – one-year contracts. So we’re looking at that to try to expand and extend those contracts.  But the main thing is that it has been resolved.”