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Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister David Coltart yesterday confirmed that the incentives would stay until teachers were paid improved salaries.
“We expected to do away with the incentives as they are discriminatory and not sustainable, ultimately disadvantaging rural teachers,” said Minister Coltart.
Although the idea of scrapping incentives was mooted last year, Minister Coltart said that his ministry had been working at outlawing the system as it was exerting pressure on parents.
They needed to give the Government more time to better civil servants’ salaries.
Once Government started paying teachers better salaries, the ministry would withdraw the circular that authorised payment of incentives.
Lately, there had been calls for the ministry to engage organisations such as the European Union and Unicef to pay a retention allowance to augment teachers’ meagre salaries.
“We’ve tried to engage several donors for the payment of teachers’ incentives, but they have never committed themselves,” said the minister.
“We continue calling on the Government to provide adequate rural allowances to encourage marginalised teachers.”
Teachers’ incentives came about because of the economic downturn between 2007 and 2009 when the Government was not in a position to increase salaries.
Online Reporter