Education Ministry says teachers do not have to pay for counselling

AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­[email protected]

Days af­ter TTUTA raised con­cern about an ap­par­ent in­ter­rup­tion in free coun­selling for teach­ers, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has made it clear that no user fees have been in­tro­duced for its Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (EAP).

In a state­ment is­sued on Fri­day, the Min­istry said fund­ing for the EAP was al­lo­cat­ed in the Fis­cal 2026 Bud­get and teach­ers are not re­quired to pay any fees—in­clud­ing the re­port­ed $450 per coun­selling ses­sion—to ac­cess min­istry-pro­vid­ed ser­vices.

While it ac­knowl­edged that men­tal health and psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port are crit­i­cal to staff well-be­ing, the Min­istry said any coun­selling arranged out­side min­istry-ap­proved mech­a­nisms should not be viewed as a re­place­ment for em­ploy­er-sup­port­ed ser­vices.

Ac­cord­ing to TTUTA, EAP ser­vices are a ne­go­ti­at­ed right pro­tect­ed un­der the Col­lec­tive Agree­ment and form part of teach­ers’ terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment.

The Min­istry added that it re­mains com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing ap­pro­pri­ate sup­port sys­tems are in place for em­ploy­ees and will pro­vide fur­ther up­dates when arrange­ments are fi­nalised.