Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

Parata cracks joke about her staff not being paid

Updated at 9:30 pm on 30 January 2013

Education Minister Hekia Parata has joked that a glitch with her ministry's pay is "karma" for errors with the Novopay system.

The $30 million system has been plagued with thousands of errors since it was introduced in August last year, with underpayments, overpayments or no payments at all to some teachers and school support staff.

Ministry staff were not paid on their regular pay day on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Ms Parata was asked about the error at Parliament.

"Yeah, karma eh? I understand it was a human error, the wrong date was entered in the instruction, so they weren't paid yesterday."

Ms Parata says ministry staff were being paid on Wednesday.

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