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First, there's the ongoing dispute over the adjustments to the hardship allowances for teachers in adverse teaching environments. We've been reporting on this one for weeks - and where it stands now is that the Union has asked for its national executive to meet with the senior Ministry technocrats to go through the entire list. The Minister has counter-proposed that the union's district leaders should meet with the District Education Councils. Nor surprisingly, the union is saying no to that:..

Hon. Elena Smith- President, BNTU
"When CEO Domingo wrote to us saying that the BNTU is further encouraged to make representations to discuss or discuss any concerns regarding the updated categorization with the various district education managers by Wednesday 7th November 2018. Since when have we been negotiating with district education managers? BNTU negotiates with the Ministry of Education. The matter of hardship and the matter of commuting and these allowances are matters that we negotiate and we negotiate with the Ministry of Education and the other partners when we do joint negotiations. So, for the Ministry to say to us, 'I will not sit with BNTU but what I will do is I will have my district managers meet with whoever they want to meet- the principals, the managers- and you give them information and we will make decisions from there,' that is not going to cut it because we will not allow that to continue. We have requested a meeting with them, the CEO agreed to that meeting, now you hear the minister talking about we want to bring all the lot of branches the many many branches. Minister, we only have ten branches and those ten branches do not negotiate. It is this council that negotiates along with our joint negotiating team; not the branches. So, we want to make that very clear. So, whatever the ministry and the minister is putting out there to discredit, to divide and to get our members against us it is not going to work."

Jules Vasquez- Reporter
"November 7th is the deadline that the Ministry has given for you all to meet with the DEC's. So, I am just saying, just to get it on the record. Obviously you all will not be having that meeting, all plans right now are to..."

Hon. Elena Smith
"Jules, they are asking for a response that we must send our concerns or feedback to those persons. So, we are going to be sending our response."