Dear Editor,
It is amazing how state minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Arnaldo Brown, ramped up a phone bill of over a million dollars in one year and tries to justify it when there are other people in the public sector who are subsidising — not by free will but by force — the Government's programmes by wage freeze, etc.
Consider this group: The work-experience teachers. A teacher is given a 'promotion' from a regular classroom teaching to being titled a work- experience teacher, whose duty it is to act as liaison with the business community, to engage and supervise fifth-form students in meaningful work experience according to their vocation areas. What is amazing in all of this is that the Ministry of Education, after waving the wand of promotion in your face, turns around and cuts your salary. To justify this pay cut the ministry has said since I am giving you a measly $28,604 monthly stipend as car allowance, you must use that to bring your salary to 80 per cent of market value. I must add that, on many occasions, the teacher has to use his/her personal phone to make phone calls because he/she is not provided with a phone for use in the field. It does not take rocket science to know that you cannot ask an employee to use his/her own vehicle to do your job and then you turn around and tell them, because I am giving you a stipend to use your car to do my job I cannot remunerate you in equal standing to your counterpart with similar qualifications.
While State Minister Brown uses over a million dollars in phone calls in one year these teachers are asking for a little less than $300,000 per year to bring them up to 80 per cent of market value. Even then, these teachers would still be subsidising the programme. There is so much inequity in this little country of ours. How can anybody perform at maximum when you know that you are treated so badly by "the master" and no amount of reasoning will get him to budge? Seems as if modern day slavery is rife in Jamaica.
Jacky Brown
jab552011@hotmail.com
Inequity the order of the day
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It is amazing how state minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Arnaldo Brown, ramped up a phone bill of over a million dollars in one year and tries to justify it when there are other people in the public sector who are subsidising — not by free will but by force — the Government's programmes by wage freeze, etc.
Consider this group: The work-experience teachers. A teacher is given a 'promotion' from a regular classroom teaching to being titled a work- experience teacher, whose duty it is to act as liaison with the business community, to engage and supervise fifth-form students in meaningful work experience according to their vocation areas. What is amazing in all of this is that the Ministry of Education, after waving the wand of promotion in your face, turns around and cuts your salary. To justify this pay cut the ministry has said since I am giving you a measly $28,604 monthly stipend as car allowance, you must use that to bring your salary to 80 per cent of market value. I must add that, on many occasions, the teacher has to use his/her personal phone to make phone calls because he/she is not provided with a phone for use in the field. It does not take rocket science to know that you cannot ask an employee to use his/her own vehicle to do your job and then you turn around and tell them, because I am giving you a stipend to use your car to do my job I cannot remunerate you in equal standing to your counterpart with similar qualifications.
While State Minister Brown uses over a million dollars in phone calls in one year these teachers are asking for a little less than $300,000 per year to bring them up to 80 per cent of market value. Even then, these teachers would still be subsidising the programme. There is so much inequity in this little country of ours. How can anybody perform at maximum when you know that you are treated so badly by "the master" and no amount of reasoning will get him to budge? Seems as if modern day slavery is rife in Jamaica.
Jacky Brown
jab552011@hotmail.com
Inequity the order of the day
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