MP Khadi­jah Ameen laments that teach­ers with de­grees are still liv­ing on 2008 salaries and calls for the sit­u­a­tion to be han­dled as soon as pos­si­ble, for the well-be­ing of teach­ers.

De­tails fol­low in this press re­lease from MP Khadi­jah Ameen:

“Sec­ondary school teach­ers with de­grees are liv­ing on a 2008 As­sis­tant Teacher Pri­ma­ry salary are lit­er­al­ly fac­ing star­va­tion as the cost of liv­ing con­tin­ues to soar.”

MP Khadi­jah Ameen to­day at the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Lo­cal Au­thor­i­ties, Ser­vice Com­mis­sions and Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties ques­tioned the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion as to:

The rea­son per­sons who were ap­point­ed as As­sis­tant Teacher (Pri­ma­ry): A Grade 1 Post since 2008, were yet to be up­grad­ed to the Grade 4 Post;

When teach­ers who were up­grad­ed on­ly on pa­per will be­gin re­ceiv­ing a salary in ac­cor­dance with their Grade Post;

The num­ber of As­sis­tant Teach­ers still wait­ing to be as­sessed and up­grad­ed.

Miss Ameen said, “There are nu­mer­ous teach­ers, both pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary, who pos­sess the re­quired qual­i­fi­ca­tions, and ex­pe­ri­ence and have not been up­grad­ed since 2008. Those who have been up­grad­ed are yet to re­ceive the new salary and con­tin­ue on the 2008 ATP salary which range from $6483 to $7990. And, in 2022, these same teach­ers are still work­ing for that salary when they should be earn­ing be­tween $12,000 and $16,000 at Grade 4 Posts. Fur­ther, these re­cent­ly con­firmed teach­ers are not on­ly ex­pect­ed to per­form the same du­ties as teach­ers who are get­ting the prop­er salary, but are forced to ob­tain re­sources at their own ex­pense.”

Ameen stat­ed, “this sit­u­a­tion is sim­ply un­ten­able and dev­as­tat­ing to ex­pect these teach­ers to be able to live off this $6000.00 salary, es­pe­cial­ly at a time where teach­ers have ad­di­tion­al ex­pens­es for WIFI, and lap­tops to be able to con­duct on­line class­es.”

Miss Ameen made the call for the sit­u­a­tion to be ur­gent­ly rec­ti­fied fol­low­ing dis­cus­sions with con­stituents in the teach­ing ser­vice who in­di­cat­ed that af­ter pay­ing for rent, in­ter­net and util­i­ties, ATPs have been forced to seek sec­ond and third jobs just to af­ford food. Some have had to be treat­ed for stress, anx­i­ety and symp­toms of mild de­pres­sion.

Ameen re­it­er­at­ed, “The role of the teacher is to in­struct and to im­part knowl­edge, the Min­istry needs to be mind­ful well-be­ing of our teach­ers dur­ing these eco­nom­i­cal­ly and so­cial­ly per­ilous times. I am call­ing on the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion cor­rect this dread­ful over­sight and in­jus­tice and reg­u­lar­ize this dread­ful this sit­u­a­tion.”