Mozambique: Government asks teachers for patience while they wait for overtime pay

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Mozambique: Government asks teachers for patience while they wait for overtime pay

5:07 CAT | 03 Dec 2024

Screen grab: STV

The Mozambican government is asking teachers to be a little calmer and more patient, reaffirming that it will soon honour its commitments and pay overtime owed.

This Monday (02-12), at least eight secondary schools in the southern province of Maputo, did not hold scheduled final exams in protest against unpaid overtime.

In a brief interview with journalists yesterday, minutes after the official opening ceremony of the school exam period in the country in Manhiça, Maputo province, the deputy minister of Education and Human Development, Manuel Banzo, acknowledged that the government is legally obliged to pay teachers these amounts.

READ: Mozambique: Teachers boycott exams in 12 schools in overtime payment dispute – Watch

“We would ask for a little more patience and the government will resolve this problem. This is not a false promise. It is the law that teachers should have it, and since it is the law, the government will have to pay overtime,” he said.

When asked about the students who were unable to take exams this Monday, Banzo said he was not aware of the matter, promising that he would make a statement after investigating the facts on the ground.

When asked about the current government’s term of office, which is about to end, Banzo remarked that the payment process had nothing to do with government mandates, as there is an institutional memory.

The deputy minister assured that, regardless of which government takes office, “it has to be paid”, and then admitted that the Executive is making a tremendous effort to do so.

According to Banzo, the fact that the government has not paid overtime from 2022 to this year is not due to a lack of money, but rather to the complexity of the procedures involved.

READ: Mozambique: Government owes 51.6 million dollars to teachers

“I would say that it is a somewhat complex process that involves identifying the overtime and this work has been done, then the payment is made and this payment is centralized, the amount goes directly to the teachers’ accounts,” he stated. There are maps that indicate the teachers who have already received their overtime pay and those who are still unpaid, from the years 2022 and 2023. “The decision that was made was to conclude the payment for 2022 and start on 2023, and so on. But I guarantee that the government will pay the overtime,” Banzo reiterated.

When asked about the risk of having dissatisfied teachers in a sector that is crucial for the country’s education and human development, Banzo said that the sector has highly qualified, professional human resources “with above-average levels of motivation and commitment”.

As proof of this, Banzo said that there are teachers in the field who are carrying out their duties, despite the lack of overtime payment. In the process of prior inspection of teachers’ overtime expenses, the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) found some irregularities, including the presentation by the organic units of overtime hours without evidence of their having been worked; the calculation of overtime hours without the mandatory minimum working hours having been worked; and the scheduling of overtime hours without the time or class book having been signed.

The Ministry of Economy and Finance also claims that among its findings are overtime hours reported on weekly rest days and that there is augmentation.

Source: AIM Moçambique