The Fernandez administration has been requiring that all public employees be paid in person in order to detect government payroll irregularities. The Ministry of Education, for one, has said that they have found hundreds of such discrepancies already, among which are the names of 271 watchmen, gardeners, janitors, and office clerks who had been promoted to teacher status and were collecting salaries as such, said Education Minister Alejandrina German. The minister spoke up to contest claims being made by the Dominican Association of Public School Teachers (ADP), who objected to the cancellation of 2,000 teaching jobs. German explained that most of the irregular promotions occurred during the governmental transition period, in order to protect certain employees by promoting them to categories in which they would be unionized and less likely to be fired.