THE Jamaica Teachers’ Association has given the government until today to indicate whether it will be keeping its promise to release funds under the J$500 million Professional Development Fund, which should have been made accessible to teachers from last October.

Hopeton Henry, the JTA president, said the association had not yet decided what other course of action it would be taking to have the government make good on its promise as they were hoping some positive response would be forthcoming today.

“The teachers are extremely angry,” Henry told reporters at a press conference at the JTA headquarters in downtown Kingston yesterday.

“Fortunately for us, the teachers are more angry with the government than us at this time,” he added.

He told reporters that some 100 teachers had been deregistered from overseas and local universities because the funds for their tuition were not available.

“The pressure is being built up on the ground as it relates to the number of calls coming in to the Jamaica Teachers’ Association. As we are speaking, teachers are being deregistered from the various universities. This is at this time very, very urgent and the Jamaica Teachers’ Association’ is viewing this delay as very important,” Henry said.

The JTA head said this is the third time the government has missed the deadline to make the funds available as agreed to in the Heads of Agreement signed in October of 2006.

“The problem is that the deadline has passed; this $500 million revolving loan fund is part of the Heads of Agreement which was signed on October 6, 2006. The critical thing is that the government has reneged on this part of the Heads of Agreement and therefore have not acted in good faith,” Henry said.

According to Henry, the government “has not recognised the urgency of this being delivered so the teachers can actually have access to the fund and begin using this fund”.

He said this meant that individuals would not be able to bring their qualifications up to the standard of a first degree as envisioned in the Education Transformation Programme instituted by former Prime Minister P J Patterson.

Regional Officer for the Ministry’s South Central Division Juno Gayle, while expressing concern for the fate of all the teachers who were being deregistered, said he was particularly worried about the implications for those from the offshore universities.

“Teachers are being deregistered both from local and offshore, the bad part of it as far as the offshore universities are concerned is that when a teacher is deregistered from a programme sometimes it takes two years for a similar programme to come around,” Gayle said.

“My personal view is that the government will have to decide whether or not teacher upgrading is important. If it is important they need to ensure that this facility is available,” he said. Gayle said if the Government moved with dispatch they might be able to have persons re-registered.

The government, on the recommendation of the Task Force on Educational Reform (2004), has agreed that all teachers must complete a Bachelors degree with professional training. The $500 million revolving loan facility was intended to provide loans to teachers to facilitate their professional upgrading. The fund will be operational for the period 2006 – 2012.