The Prime Minister had a meeting with the Vice-Minister of Education, Abel Ximenes, Directors of the Ministry of Education, and staff from monitoring in exercise in the office of the Minister of State, Coordinating Minister of Social Affairs, on July 25th, in the Government Palace, in Dili. The objective was to find a solution for the delays in the payment of teachers from thirteen Learning and Educational Training Centres (acronym in Portuguese: CAFE), in the entire territory.
The Head of Government requested detailed information about the financing of the Learning and Educational Training Centres, by the Ministry of Education, that are distributed through two mechanisms: the Counterpart Fund, that transfers the monies to the account of the Portuguese Embassy, for the payment of the considerations to CAFE; and the direct payment in the bank accounts of the Portuguese teachers, for housing payment. The delays started long ago, because the internal management of the Ministry is still fragile and the allocated budget for this item in 2015 is insufficient.
As a result of this meeting, the Head of the Executive gave the Ministry of Education instructions to process, as fast as possible, the pending payments, tapping allocations, in the Ministry of Education, to cover the forecasted deficit for this year; in addition, to include in the 2016 Plan amounts for the Learning and Educational Training Centres, as Public Transfers, enabling the execution of CAFE’s programme.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance issued an information, according to which the Counterpart Fund may make transfers to the bank accounts, already from July 27th.,