Speaking to the Lusa news agency, the secretary general of Sinprof said that so far only teachers in the provinces of Luanda and Benguela and only one school in Huambo province have been paid.
“Unfortunately, the Government is not fulfilling President João Lourenço's maxim regarding better communication. We have already consulted both the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Education – it is not the fault of the Ministry of Education, because it does not pay salaries – but the Ministry of Finance, unfortunately, does not say the real reason for this delay,” Admar Jinguma told Lusa. .
According to the unionist, “it is only speculated that it is a treasury problem”, but as teachers cannot speculate, they have to have “concrete things”.
“We have already consulted them at the highest level, unfortunately, they do not tell us where the problem is”, underlined the union leader, referring that doctors and nurses were in the same situation.
Admar Jinguma said that they will continue to exert pressure, but if the situation persists they will have to “take other measures” which, for now, he did not want to go ahead with.
“What we want from the Government is transparency. It costs nothing to go public and say: gentlemen, we are not going to have the money on time for reason X or Y”, he appealed.
Sinprof's general secretary recalled that this situation of wages being paid late has been dragging on since February.
"This situation has been going on since February, when we are receiving salaries irregularly", he said, lamenting the "difficult" situation of teachers, which has caused a high rate of absenteeism.
“People don't have money to eat or to go to work. We are in the revision phase for the tests and the teachers are not in the schools. Some manage to make some effort, but those who need to travel long distances where are they going to get the money to pay for a taxi? There is no way, it is a very difficult situation, the schools are almost empty and this fault cannot be attributed to the teachers, ”he lamented.
Lusa tried to obtain further clarification from the Ministry of Finance, which has not been possible so far.
