NIK uncovers big mistakes in Education Ministry's spending calculations

The Supreme Board of Inspection (NIK) has found that the Education Ministry made "glaring errors" last year when planning budgetary spending. In mid-2000, NIK determined that the Ministry was zl.1.3 billion short for teachers' raises. Education Minister Miroslaw Handke ended up resigning over the blunder, while local governments had to take out loans to pay teachers what they were promised under the newly introduced Teacher's Charter, which establishes teachers' salaries. Now NIK has discovered that the financial woes were mainly caused by the Ministry's bad planning. "The Ministry did not know how many teachers there are, it had miscalculated their number by over 19,000," NIK head Janusz Wojciechowski said. Andrzej Karwacki, the deputy education minister at the time, reportedly promised his subordinates a bottle of cognac if their estimates turned out to be correct. (Rzeczpospolita, p.A1) T.J.