THE education ministry has refused to pay 21 teachers who returned to their old jobs this month on the strength of the court victory by eight of their colleagues who had challenged their dismissal under a derailed staff rationalisation programme the ministry tried to push through more than a year ago.

Senior ministry officials have been unavailable for comment on the issue since last Thursday, but the Jamaica Teachers Association (JTA) is insisting that these teachers should have automatic reinstatement, given the fact that their circumstances were the same as the eight on whose behalf the union had gone to court.

“This clearly is against the Supreme Court judgement,” said JTA general-secretary Dr Adolf Cameron at celebratory dinner last Wednesday night. “If the 29 teachers were given similar letters under the same conditions by agents of the ministry and the court rules that the (dismissal) letters given to those named in the judgement are illegal, then it is clearly logical that it applies to every one of the persons who received such letters.”

Education Minister Burchell Whiteman had, in mid-2000, announced a plan to chop a net 300 teaching jobs, a process that would have included removing some posts at the secondary level and recruiting in secondary schools.

However, a public outcry caused Prime Minister P J Patterson to halt the plan and announce a scheme to retrain teachers to work in new areas of emphasis, such as early childhood education and information technology. Matters were further complicated for the government not long afterwards when the New York City Board of Education came to Jamaica to recruit 300 teachers with specialised skills already in short supply here.

By that time, however, 29 teachers had already been sent home by the boards of five schools — Edith Dalton James High, Haile Selassie High, Papine High, New Day Primary and Junior High in Kingston and Bellefield Primary in St Mary.

The dismissals of eight of the teachers were challenged by the JTA, which argued that the education ministry had contravened the Education Act.

The JTA and the teachers lost at the Supreme Court, but in December the decision was reversed by the Court of Appeal, and all 29 teachers returned to school at the start of the new term in January.

But, according to JTA president Paul Adams, most of them have not received their timetables.

“The Ministry of Education is saying that the ruling applies only to the eight persons named in the judgement … therefore, the ones whose names do not appear cannot be automatically reinstated,” Cameron told the Observer.

Errol Levy, who is in charge of the education ministry’s operations in Kingston and St Andrew, has been unavailable since Thursday for comment and calls to his office have not been returned.

Edwin Thomas, the ministry’s public relations officer, has been unable to comment on the matter.

Last Wednesday at a JTA dinner at Shirley Retreat House in Kingston to welcome back the teachers, several of them told of being cordially welcomed back by their boards and staff, yet they were facing obstacles from the education ministry.

“When I went back I was shown a letter which said only the five persons named are to be paid,” said Judith Hutchinson from Edith Dalton James, from where 10 teachers were dismissed.

Lorna Jackson, a former vice-principal at Haile Selassie, where she has taught for 33 years, was among those dismissed in the rationalisation programme. She was also among the eight who had gone to court and was, therefore, reinstated.

At Wednesday night’s function, Jackson asked that school boards and the ministry make public apologies to the teachers “for making us out to be a group of slackers who don’t do any work”.

Adams urged Whiteman not to repeat what he said was the mistake of the rationalisation exercise.

“Mr Minister, do not go that route, because when the dust settles we won’t be the ones to lose,” Adams said.

Adams also said he feared more teachers would leave for jobs overseas in a bid to get better salaries. In fact, New York City recruiters were in the island last week expecting to poach another 60 teachers.

“What the government must do is to compete or pay the consequences,” Adams said.

“If you want the teachers to remain in the Jamaican classroom, go to England, take a video clip of their classes, photocopy their cheque stubs, look at their benefits and say, ‘I will match this’,” he added.