The government has fulfilled the promise given to teachers said Latvian Minister of Education and Science Anda Čakša in an interview to TV3 programme 900 seconds.
She stressed that while working on the schedule to increase the lowest wages together with the trade union, an agreement on numbers was reached as early as January. An agreement was reached on the schedule and workload balancing. Last Tuesday the government approved the schedule, and on Friday – the rules that govern calculation of teachers’ wages.
Čakša stressed that a total of EUR 89 million has been diverted towards teachers’ pay increase and workload balancing in 2023. This is an unprecedented amount.
As for the creation of a schedule for the increase of the lowest wages, politicians discussed an additional amount of EUR 11 million, which is in the process of being diverted from the state budget programme for emergencies, added the minister.
“When it comes to the attitude, I have always had high respect of the work done by teachers. We have to look back at this difficult period of time teachers have to go through because of the new programme. I wouldn’t want to think attitude has been bad in some way, because the government cares, and has approved all rules to outline that teachers are a government priority and what was promised will be completed,” said the politician.
The minister agrees that certain demands presented at the last strike may not have been completed on time. At the same time, she stressed it is still planned to increase wages on the 1st of September 2023.
“This strike is not so much about wages, rather the difficult work and the period of time during which a great deal of exhaustion had accumulated among teachers.
It is important for us to resolve problems related to quality,” said the minister.
As previously reported, on the 24th of April LIZDA will be holding a protest procession with more than 8 000 participants from the medical and education sectors.
The protest procession will be followed up by a three-day strike.
Also read: Latvian National Armed Forces army orchestra takes part in world-renowned festival in USA