MINED pays teachers from parochial schools and tells them “the priests stole the money”
In La Prensa, June 8, 2023
The lawyer Martha Patricia Molina denounced that the teachers “ were not paid by check as usual and they were reminded that this payment was thanks to the good government”
The freezing of the bank accounts of the Dioceses of the country on the part of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, in their frontal attack against the Catholic Church, directly affected parochial schools and Catholic schools subsidized in the country, according to a memo from the Educational Pastoral of the Archdiocese of Managua. Currently the Ministry of Education (MINED) will assume half of the payment of the teachers.
The Archdiocesan Educational Pastoral reported in a letter addressed to the principals of the affected schools, that is already circulating in social networks, that “the teachers who are benefitted with economic support (subsidy) will be paid in the departmental offices and in the city of Managua in the district of MINED.” The measure has been applied since June 7th.
The lawyer and author of “Nicaragua: A persecuted Church,” Martha Patricia Molina, confirmed that situation for La Prensa and denounced that the Sandinista Sergio Mercado, departmental delegate of MINED, gathered together the teachers of the parochial schools and grouped them by districts in order to pay them in cash.
Molina criticized the fact that the teachers “were not paid by check as normal and were reminded that this payment was thanks to the good government, and that they were promised an increase in salary.”
The meeting in District III was held in the Miguel de Cervantes Institute,” she noted. According to Molina “the delegate showed up with a suitcase full of cash and with the payroll in hand. He asked all the teachers to show their identity cards and told them that from now on they were going to be paid directly because the priests were stealing the money from the subsidies. That in addition they were making money off the transfers and were not paying out the full salary.”
“He is violating their labor rights”
The lawyer Molina stated that that action of MINED “violates” the labor rights of the teachers, due to the fact that “no one is paying them for what they are spending on transportation to travel outside their place of work to get their salary.”
At the same time, she indicated that it is an “intimidating condition” because “they do not provide them any receipt and the Ministry of Labor of Nicaragua (MITRAB) should intervene in this illegal attitude of MINED.”
The researcher regretted the fact that “the teachers cannot go to that institution and complain because Nicaragua does not have any institutional structure and a teacher who complains will face reprisals.”
Which is why she has no hesitation in stating that the actions of MINED show “the vengeance of the dictatorship toward those who work for the parochial schools and at the same time, they are paying them in order to keep the parochial schools from closing down their operations, because the dictatorship does not have the technical capacity to respond to that educational demand.”
She also told this paper that as part of the repression against the schools administered by the Catholic Church “they prohibited them from carrying out internal activities to raise funds.”
“Wage supplement”
In the memo from the Archdiocesan Educational Pastoral it was indicated that the rest of the payment, in other words the wage supplement that the teachers of the schools administered by the Catholic Church “must be assumed through the payment of the monthly tuition of the students.”
“The accounts remain frozen due to the investigation process,” reads the memo, which is why they call people to remain calm and “submit ourselves to prayer and wise prudence.”
At the end of May, after several days of being revealed through social media that the regime ordered that the account of several Dioceses of the country be frozen, the Police issued a press release and reported that they were investigating a supposed “illicit activity in the management of the funds and bank accounts” of different Dioceses of the country and other activities which would form part of a money laundering network which they discovered in some Dioceses.
The document, in a clear allusion to Mons. Rolando Álvarez, says that on Friday May 19th, 2023 they reported to them “illicit activity in the management of the funds and resources in bank accounts which had belonged to people found guilty of treason against the country.”
According to the Police, on beginning the investigation they found “hundreds of thousands of dollars hidden in bags” located in diocesan installations.
“The National Police reported the findings and the investigations to the appropriate authorities who in turn began their own investigations, in accordance with the law, to locate and cancel the illicit acts committed by people connected to those Dioceses,” reads part of the press release.
In addition, it points out that “the results of the investigations confirmed the illegal withdrawal of resources from bank accounts which had been ordered frozen by the law, as well as other illicit acts which are still being investigated as part of a money laundering network which has been discovered in Dioceses in different departments.”