Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

There was an av­er­age of 79.5 per cent at­ten­dance of teach­ers across the pub­lic school sys­tem on Mon­day, al­though the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) re­versed its call for a day of “Rest and Re­flec­tion” fol­low­ing the ex parte in­junc­tion grant­ed by the In­dus­tri­al Court on be­half of the Min­is­ter of Labour.

Ac­cord­ing to at­ten­dance records pro­vid­ed to Guardian Me­dia by Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, there was 64 per cent at­ten­dance at the Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion (EC­CE) lev­el, 72.12 per cent at the pri­ma­ry lev­el and 72.34 per cent at the sec­ondary lev­el.

How­ev­er, stu­dents’ at­ten­dance was sig­nif­i­cant­ly less, with on­ly 35.23 and 39.8 per cent of them at­tend­ing at the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary lev­els re­spec­tive­ly. Fig­ures were not pro­vid­ed for the EC­CE lev­el.

Guardian Me­dia has re­quest­ed the av­er­age at­ten­dance on a typ­i­cal school day from the Min­is­ter to de­ter­mine how Mon­day’s turnout com­pares.

The ex parte ap­pli­ca­tion was filed pur­suant to Sec­tion 65 of the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act at 3 pm on Sun­day. By 5 pm, the mat­ter was heard by In­dus­tri­al Court pres­i­dent Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix, vice-pres­i­dent Her­bert Sover­all, chair­man of the In­dus­tri­al Court’s Es­sen­tial Ser­vices Di­vi­sion Lawrence Achong and mem­ber Gre­go­ry Rousseau.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour said ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 69: 1 (d) of the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act, the teach­ing ser­vice is an es­sen­tial ser­vice and is there­fore not per­mit­ted to take in­dus­tri­al ac­tion, whether it be “rest­ing and re­flect­ing” or any­thing amount­ing to not turn­ing out to work.

Fol­low­ing this, TTUTA pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah-De Fre­itas called off the ac­tion and told teach­ers to present them­selves for work yes­ter­day.

Com­ment­ing on the turnout, Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) pres­i­dent Kevin David said he hoped both the teach­ers and Gov­ern­ment could come to an agree­ment in the in­ter­est of the na­tion’s chil­dren.

“The NPTA’s view is we need our chil­dren to be ed­u­cat­ed with min­i­mal dis­rup­tion. Yes, this in­junc­tion was a sur­prise to us, and we are tru­ly sor­ry it came to that. We are grate­ful for all our hard-work­ing teach­ers, and we are al­so thank­ful for the na­tion’s chil­dren be­ing af­ford­ed a nor­mal day of school, which we hope will be ben­e­fi­cial and pro­duc­tive in every way.

We look for­ward to all par­ties be­ing able to cor­dial­ly come to the ta­ble again and in a spir­it of fair­ness, to be able to air their con­cerns and come to a speedy res­o­lu­tion,” he said yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert again re­it­er­at­ed that Gov­ern­ment could not af­ford more than the four per cent of­fer it had on the ta­ble.