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After years of complaints by teachers about long delays in the disbursement of their professional allowances the National Education Ministry is finally going to do something about it, promising to pay the allowances at the same time as monthly salaries.

Baedowi, the ministry’s director general for teacher supervision, said that starting in 2010 teacher allowances would be transferred to the general transfer payments fund, where the salaries come from.

“We hope this new policy addresses the problem,” he said.

Giri Suryatmana, another ministry official, said the government had allocated Rp 8.8 trillion ($888.8 million) in 2010 to pay the professional allowances of 317,700 teachers who obtained certification between 2006 and 2008.

The government introduced the teacher certification program in 2006 as part of a long-term effort to standardize and improve the quality of the country’s educators.

The program, which will run until 2015, aims to certify 2.5 million state and private schoolteachers.

Teachers who are certified qualify for a professional allowance equal to their salary, effectively doubling their pay.

Sulistyo, the head of the Indonesian Teachers Union, said delays in the payment of allowances had existed since the certification program began three years ago. He said teachers often had to wait several months to receive their allowances.

He also claimed that in some areas of Java, certified teachers had been asked to give 3 percent of their professional allowances to their local education offices.

“This practice should be stopped because [the allowances] are the teachers’ right,” Sulistyo said. “They should get the allowances on time and in full.”

He said hundreds of teachers who had received their certification in 2008 were still waiting for the government to disburse allowances that they were supposed to start receiving in January 2009. “And look, it’s September already. I just don’t understand this,” he said

Giri from the National Education Ministry said officials were doing their best to get the allowances to teachers on time.

He also put some of the blame for the delays on the teachers themselves, saying many of them had provided incorrect bank account information.

“Insya Allah [God willing] there will be no more delays, because we will distribute [the allowances] along with their salaries,” he said.