Maravi

Govt owes Eastern Province teachers K15bn – PEO

Govt owes Eastern Province teachers K15bn – PEO
By Christopher Miti in Chipata
Thu 11 Feb. 2010, 04:00 CAT

EASTERN Province education officer Pilila Jere has said the ministry owes teachers in the province about K15 billion in unpaid outstanding allowances.

Featuring on a Breeze FM Budget Tracking programme on Tuesday, Jere commended teachers for being committed to work despite the outstanding allowances owed to them by the Ministry of Education.

“The strike that we had last year was not as a result of maladministration in the province, they were as a result of national issues. When you talk about rural hardship you are talking about issues that affect all teachers in the country, so Eastern Province was not spared,” Jere said.

“In terms of outstanding bills, the province has about K15 billion in form of outstanding bills and these are in different categories. We have leave terminal, leave travel benefits, long service salary arrears, excess leave and other allowances. Under leave, we have a total amount of K3.7 billion that is outstanding, leave travel we have K1.7 billion, long service bonus we have about K868.9 million, under salary arrears we have K4.4 billion, under excess leave K630 million and acting allowance we have K1.6 billion. So you can see that the bill is huge and most of our retired senior citizens are also badly affected.”

She said her office had received some money in the line of salary-related allowances that include leave travel, leave terminal, long service bonus and salary arrears.

Jere said her office had been allocated with K31 billion that would go towards outstanding bills.

Jere revealed that most retired teachers were affected by the outstanding debt, which resulted from insufficient funding to the ministry due to the global financial crisis experienced last year.

And senior planning officer at the provincial education office, Steven Zimba said the province had a lot of needs in infrastructure development like dilapidated structures, lack of staff accommodation and lack of furniture in schools.

Zimba said the ministry would need billions of kwacha to ensure that all the challenges affecting the ministry were addressed.

He revealed that the Ministry of Education in Chipata had been forced to cut down on the identified projects from 30 to about five due to inadequate funding.

However, Zimba said the Ministry of Education was thankful to the government for providing resources to the education sector.

Labels: DOMESTIC DEBT, EASTERN PROVINCE, PILILA JERE, TEACHERS

posted by MrK @ 5:41 PM