We received a write-up shedding light on reasons behind the delay many graduate teachers face in receiving upgraded salaries and benefits of a new qualification in The Gambia, especially after university education. Below we reproduce response:

Yes, there are possibilities of some delays in the handling of upgrading / appointments on promotions of teachers from UTG/GC. It can take a month or two in most cases and beyond that in few unique cases. These are however premised on a number of factors amongst them two prominent dimensions (individual and institutional).

1. Institutionally, MoBSE as a government ministry has been accorded a shared responsibility to handle certain matters of teachers of grade 8 and below through a committee called C-PADT (Committee for the Promotion, Appointment and Discipline of Teachers) which has been functional since 2014. Its membership consists of PSC, PMO, GTU and a private Educationalist with HRD-MoBSE serving as its secretariate and the PS-MoBSE as the Chair. However, recently, the support to this committee has been withdrawn rendering it practically paralyzed. NB: Neither the Auditor General nor the President are working for free thus you cannot expect responsible officers to be serving under such tedious and delegated practical functions without proper facilitations/remunerations. Therefore, a lot of hinderances are faced when it comes to executions of functions on the part of C-PADT. (Let government restore support to C-PADT to get it up and running as expected)
2. Individually, the teachers in question contribute to 99% of the problems they complained about in many other ways.

1. Some of them will finish their programs as early as April but never show up until the end of the year.
2. Others will only report to their schools of postings just to get their salaries adjusted and continue with other economic activities.
3. Worst of all, a good number of them will change their program (eg. From Mathematics and Physics to Banking and Finance or Law) without prior approval from the ministry but still expect the ministry to give them graduate status