A friend of mine works as an online teacher at a school in Myanmar, called Leading Asia Myanmar International School, also known as LAMIS. From what I know, it is a new school, been around fora year or two. As we are in COVID time, all their teachers are not in Myanmar and deliver lessons following Myanmar school hours. They all have a valid working contract and only receive a salary without any benefits that an international school teachers would normally get. The owner of the school is saving tons of money on visas, air fares, health insurance, housing allowances, as well as contract completion bonuses.
Recently the school sacked their head of school (HOS) because they found out that ontop of being a HOS for LAMIS, he is also a HOS for a school in Europe. He did this because he hasn’t received his full salaries for the months he worked there. There were times where he had to pay other teachers’ salary with his own money as the owner rarely pays foreign teachers’ salary as agreed. Let’s call this HOS Adam.
LAMIS now has a new education consultant acting as the head of school. As all new head or manager, Greg wants to leave his mark at this new school. He has made some interesting suggestions and let out a few secrets he shouldn’t have. One of the suggestions he made was for all teachers to move to a country closer to Myanmar to reduce the time difference. One of the secrets he let out was his personal feelings towards one of the current teachers and that he has thought of replacing existing teachers with his own crew.
Going forward, I will call this friend of mine Anya. Anya and her husband work for LAMIS since the start of 2021 academic year. They live in Europe, with 3 kids. They were unemployed and needed this job to make sure they don’t continue being homeless. According to Anya and her husband, Adam sent them 500USD to help with the set up of online teaching. They all agreed that this would be deducted from their first salary.
A few days ago, Anya told me that 2 months into their employment, they have yet to receive their first paycheck. She and her husband asked Greg about it. His answer was, “I haven’t paid you your salary because HSBC can’t do the transfer. The first one bounced back and I don’t know what happened to the other two I made. HSBC said they can’t do a bank transfer to an alphanumeric account number.”
Now, Anya and her husband need that money so they can continue paying rent and put food on the table. With winter coming, her husband started to contact Greg almost daily to find out if they would be paid at all. He may have used flowerly language to express his frustration and desperation.
Greg did not take kindly to the messages and told Anya’s husband that he is done. He then removed both Anya and her husband from the school’s WhatsApp group. He also told Anya that if she wants to keep her job, she needs to tell her husband to stop harrasing him.
As we all know, there is always two sides of a story. I freelanced at the school when I was looking for a full time employment in Australia. To date, Adam, myself and the curriculum coordinator are still waiting for the money we are owed.
This Greg guy is new and after he took over from Adam, he sent a message to the group WhatsApp account telling everyone that he is the new Adam until LAMIS appoints a new HOS. Any problems or questions should be directed to him and not Adam. I did as he asked and he told me to speak to Adam as he has no knowledge of the issue (missing salary). From the one interaction I had with him, he seems to be working off a script and lacks in forward planning. No attention to details.
Questions I would love to ask him…
1. If the money transfer bounced the first time, wouldn’t you check with Anya and her husband to make sure that you have the correct banking details?
2. Did HSBC tell you why the transfer failed and if they didn’t, did you ask why?
3. You said you tried to send the money again and this time, you don’t know what is happening to that money. Have you contacted the bank to find out more?
4. I was a customer of HSBC when I worked in Malaysia. When I wanted to send money to Indonesia, they asked if the account I was sending the money to is a foreign currency account as they don’t send Rupiah. HSBC will tell you if something isn’t going to work.
For those who are reading this. what is your take on the issue? What advice would you give to Anya and her husband?
UPDATE: Anya got her last month’s salary yesterday. Her husband was told he would get his next month.
Living in limbo 