education

Program missing funding

Complaints continue over the failure of the Ministerio de Educación (Meduca) to make payments to the operators of the Centros Familiares y Comunitarios de Educación Inicial.

The centers serve children who are 4 and 5 years old and who live in extreme poverty.

According to Victoria Tello, Meduca's initial education director, part of the problem is the amount of red tape that must be negotiated for the payments to be made.

She said that the operators of the centers are not timely in submitting paperwork, and the forms submitted are often difficult to read or have errors. This slows the payment process considerably.

But Juventino Gutiérrez, one of the 50 or so people who operate the centers, told a much different story when asked about the issue. The promoter said the reports submitted by the centers are not to be blamed for the delay.

"The reports are made to a regional office," Gutiérrez said. "Then they are forwarded to the main office in the capital. It is in those steps that the reports are damaged and the errors made."

Gutiérrez has been submitting these reports for about eight years to an office in Chepo. It is only in the last eight months that problems have surfaced.

The program was funded with a loan from the World Bank that totaled $4.6 million and a $6 million contribution from the government.

The payment delays have hampered the program. Meduca officials declined to comment about the payment problems.