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As we told you two weeks ago, the Ministry intends to cut this year's Christmas break short by 4 days. So, instead of classes resuming on January 9, students and teachers are being expected to show up on January 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th. For the Easter holiday, classes will continue into April 10th, and 11th. That's the method that the Ministry wants to employ to make up those lost school days. This evening, the BNTU President told us that, according to the Education Rules, the Ministry is not allowed to just arbitrarily take away teachers' holiday days. Here's how he explained it:

Luke Palacio, President - BNTU
"The education rules are clear; the education rules says that the teachers of this country should be on vacation for the Christmas period, Easter period and in the month of July. So, again for the minister and his chief education officer to try and force our teachers to go to school on those days when they should be on holidays, we are saying they should be on holiday and unless they can come with some justification as it relates to that matter, our teachers are looking at that very seriously, because we are entitled to our holidays and will make every effort to ensure that we take those days because it is by law. It is not a decision arbitrarily made by any minister or any chief education officer."

Reporter
"Sir, but how else would time be made up? I don't know if the BNTU ever looked at how the time would be recovered, given that the teachers have said they were willing to make up the time."

Luke Palacio, President - BNTU
"They were not given an opportunity to explain that to their managements. Their managements were hoodwink. Their management's in fact went hand in hand with the government. We can say that deliberately. Because when you look that they have quoted, rule 131 sub rule 4 I think it is, it says that the chief education officer may on the recommendation of management decide whether you will extend the school year. They called those people in to a meeting, gave them instructions, said to them, this is how you are going to make up this time. That, again we believe continues to be the attempt of the ministry and the minister in particular to try and punish the teachers. We say it again, we did nothing wrong when we demonstrated. We did nothing wrong when we went on strike. We did everything for this country and we are prepared to continue to do so based on the support that we get from our people and we must always remember, this country belongs to all of us."

As we reported many times, the teachers say that they can make up the lost time in their own way. They say that they only need to be given an audience by their school's managers to make a sales pitch.