The opposition deputies members of the Education Commission presented a bill that aims to expedite the payment, decreed by law in 2017, of retirement incentive bonuses for teachers and education assistants. The initiative was proposed by the College of Teachers of Chile.
In this regard, its national president, Carlos Díaz Marchant indicated that “we have said it tirelessly: it is inhumane the time that must be waited for the teacher to receive the retirement bonus. We are talking about a law of the Republic, a law that is financed. Therefore, there is no explanation to justify that teachers have to wait three, four, five years for the payment of this bonus.”
In that line, he called on the Mystery of Education and other authorities of the portfolio to “comply with the Law with the workers, it is not possible that in this country only compliance with the law is required of a few but when it is the workers who are not complied with, absolutely nothing happens.”
One of the promoters of the project, Deputy Camila Rojas (Commons) said that the measure has priority: “there are teachers who have died in waiting and that can no longer be allowed.”
Deputy Rodrigo González (PPD), meanwhile, added that “there are teachers and assistants who have died without being able to receive their retirement due to the administrative, bureaucratic obstacles and the delay that the Ministry of Education and the Municipal Corporations have had, and with these projects we seek to expedite and agile the retirement system because the laws and rights have to be complied with, it is not possible that laws passed more than 5 years ago are not being complied with.”
The Retirement Bonus is a benefit that allows teachers of retirement age to receive an amount of money that compensates for the low salaries received during their professional life, constituting an incentive to retire from the classroom, that is, the non-payment of this right means a direct decrease in their quality of life.
