The Ministry of Education and Youth has moved to implement new mechanisms to ensure that the new teachers who were employed at short notice to help fill vacancies in the education sector due to ongoing teacher migration are paid in the month of September.

A total of 1,155 new teachers have joined the education sector.

In a statement on Monday, September 18, the education ministry said that under normal circumstances for teachers to be paid in a particular month, the employment document must be submitted by the last working day of the previous month.

However, it said given the number of teachers that have been employed this month, the deadline was extended to September 12, and deployed its accounting staff to work overtime and on the weekend to process the documents.

“The ministry received a total of 782 new teachers’ files on or before the September 12 deadline. Of this total, 624 new teachers’ files were processed and 158 new teachers’ files were deemed incomplete because they did not meet the required standard to enable payment,” the Education Minister Fayval Williams said.

Williams further noted that 373 new teachers’ files were submitted after the extended deadline of September 12.

“Given the importance of salary payment to our teachers, the ministry will do an out-of-cycle payroll during the last week of September to ensure that the 373 new teachers’ files that were received late (after September 12), the 158 new teachers with incomplete files and any other submissions that are sent to the ministry by September 25, are processed once all required payment documents are submitted,” she said.

The education ministry further noted that the Accountant General has confirmed that the payroll process for teachers has begun and $2 billion has already been released into bursar-paid schools, which pay teachers directly.