3,075 female garden teachers in Bogotá were illegally hired according to the Council's complaint

During a debate on political control over irregularities in the recruitment of teachers in district kindergartens, complaints were made against the secretariats of Education and Social Integration for job insecurity, violation of labor rights, modification of the extension of contracts and political pressure on the teachers of kindergartens.

According to information that the Councillor for New Liberalism, Juan Baena, collected to date, there are 3,075 teachers who are linked by the provision of services when they should be hired from the plant.

“In the city there are 3,000 female teachers who are illegally hired, mostly women who leave their children at home to go to work long hours with child overload and up to 12 hours of work with a contract for the provision of services,” said Councilman Baena.

It is worth remembering that according to the 1994 General Education Act, this form of linkage is illegal because pre-school education (pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and transition) is part of the formal education service.

“The linking of teaching, management and administrative personnel to the public educational service may only be effected through the personnel plant approved by the respective territorial entity”, as stipulated in the law.

During the debate in the Bogotá Council, it was also revealed that approximately 80% of the staff hired, to care for the more than 42,000 children in district kindergartens, do not have labor guarantees.

In addition, according to the complainant teachers, in some gardens all the staff hired worked for the provision of services, which, as was also reported, the District suspended or modified the duration in order to give the appearance that they were occasional or extraordinary ties.

Regarding the latter, the lobbyist stated that Social Integration made a change in the contractual object, that in 2018 professionals were linked by the concept of 'professional teacher services for initial education', while since 2020 the contracts refer to 'services for comprehensive care of early childhood '.

“We note that not only were the objects of the contracts modified, but also the duration, where different temporalities are used and suspended during vacation periods, in order to interrupt the continuity of work and give the appearance of a contract for the provision of services,” said Baena.

Finally, pressure from officials for teachers to attend political meetings was also mentioned.

According to a testimony of one of the teachers, who participated in the complaint anonymously, “in my eight years that I handed over to the Secretariat for Social Integration, which was a bad experience, we were never recognized as professional teachers. We were always for them the nannies, the caregivers, the servants, the bulldozers because we even did the toilet and the goal.”

For these irregularities, the Ministry of Social Integration faces 167 judicial proceedings and nine convictions seeking to declare the contract reality, which could cost the city $250 billion, since, on average, the lawsuits claim $50 million.

For his part, the councillor of the Democratic Pole Carlos Carrillo emphasized that this is an infamous treatment for teachers at this level of education, “everything remains in the discourse, job insecurity has an intrinsic mistreatment,” he said. In addition, he highlighted the work of teachers in education and society and explained that if this figure is continued, the goal set in the Development Plan will not be achieved.

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