Elgin Taylor, Gleaner Writer
LLUIDAS VALE, St. Catherine:
AS THE time for the reopening of school approached, parents were seen in the plazas scrambling to make last minute purchases for their children.
The main items purchased consisted of school bags, uniforms, notebooks, crayons, pens, and pencils. The lines in the banks were longer than usual as parents waited to pay the terms fees for their children or to obtain loans to make such payments.
Some of the payments could be quite substantial, as some parents told The Gleaner that their four and five-year-olds attend private schools and that the term fees were $25,000 and $35,000 respectively.
With the growing demand for continuing education in the country, a number of the parents who sought loans were doing so for themselves. This was the case when The Gleaner visited the Teachers' Co-operative Credit Union in Kingston last week Tuesday.
It was a long wait for the teachers present. It was observed that it took an average of two and a half to three hours from the time the forms were filled out to the processing and disbursement of the cheque. Teachers wondered aloud if this were a retrograde step as the service had shown improvements in recent times.
WAIT AND SEE ATTITUDE
Invariably, the teachers started talking about the tight financial squeeze and the impending salary negotiations, giving their opinions in the process. Most of them expressed cautious optimism, while others were more pessimistic, seeing nothing better ahead. One teacher said she had already put plans in place to emigrate, but was just waiting to see what the Government had to offer. The teachers said they believed a 65 per cent increase in salaries may be stretch, it a bit but agreed wholeheartedly with Senator Dwight Nelson that inflation had eroded the purchasing power of public sector workers by 30 per cent. They suggested that no increase below that amount would appease the workers.
With the back-to-school exercise following so closely on the heals of the festive season the teachers, like many other parents, are hard pressed to make ends meet.
