Dr Nelma Mortis, Shadow Minister, Education
"Our teachers are leaving the profession due to a combination of factors, including overwhelming workload, lack of support from administration and management, increasing student behavior and issues and that's an effect of our social ills, high level of stress, excessive licensing requirements, poor working condition and a feeling of not being valued by the community or parents which leads to burnout and a desire to pursue different career goals. Many of them are even now moving towards call center work to save their lives, they are on life support. Another area that is defunct in the Ministry of Education is that of addressing the related issues of salary, increments, and allowances in an efficient manner. A blue bone was thrown to us and I refer to it as a blue bone because according to the PUP, we don't deserve meat. We were promised in December 2024 that teachers, they would correct the matter of the increments and the outstanding salaries and allowances for teachers. That's a matter of the PUP showing us how good they are at engineering and electioneering. To date, 650 teachers have not received their two year increment salary adjustment or upgrade. As I understand it, this will be reflected in the January salaries, so we will hear an uproar very soon. again, a crisis management plan was employed, increments were not paid out through smartstream and therefore the payroll maintenance wasn't done in time so January salaries will look just like December without the increment adjusted."