JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, February 15, 2025

COSTAATT nursing students worried over non-payment of monthly stipends

by

953 days ago
20220707
Flashback:Nursing Students  during the Joint Trade Union Movement’s public rally in Port-of-Spain, May 2017.

Flashback:Nursing Students during the Joint Trade Union Movement’s public rally in Port-of-Spain, May 2017.

Abraham Diaz

Nurs­ing stu­dents at the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of Trinidad and To­ba­go (COSTAATT) are wor­ried they may have to drop out of their pro­grammes and give up on their dreams due to a non-pay­ment of month­ly stipends since Oc­to­ber 2021

Stu­dents who are en­rolled in both the Bach­e­lor’s and As­so­ciate de­gree pro­grammes are usu­al­ly paid an al­lowance of be­tween $1,100 and $1,300 per month.

One nurs­ing stu­dent, who asked to re­main anony­mous, said mon­ey went to­wards ex­pens­es such as food and trans­port to hos­pi­tals where they were as­signed for train­ing. The train­ing is in ad­di­tion to class­es, which have been on­line since the be­gin­ning of the pan­dem­ic.

Guardian Me­dia was told that be­tween Oc­to­ber 2020 and Oc­to­ber 2021, no stipends were paid be­cause the en­tire pro­gramme was con­duct­ed vir­tu­al­ly.

But while on­line class­es con­tin­ue, in Oc­to­ber 2021 they were or­dered to re­turn phys­i­cal­ly to hos­pi­tals for their train­ing cours­es.

Since then, the stu­dents say they have not re­ceived the month­ly stipend.

One stu­dent told Guardian Me­dia that now, they pay their ex­pens­es them­selves, which de­feats the pur­pose of them en­rolling with COSTAATT.

“I went to COSTAATT be­cause of the stipend, be­cause I had to leave my job, as this pro­gramme re­quires school and train­ing so it’s not like I could al­so go to work, al­though some have de­cid­ed to but they work very late at night,” the stu­dent claimed.

An­oth­er added that some stu­dents were now con­sid­er­ing drop­ping out be­cause they need­ed to earn mon­ey.

“Peo­ple may say it’s just one thou­sand dol­lars but to some of us, that is a lot. It used to at least cov­er trans­port and some­thing to eat, now I have to do this all day and look for some­where to work in the evening to cov­er those ex­pens­es,” that stu­dent said.

The stu­dents claimed that when­ev­er they ask about their mon­ey, they get the im­pres­sion COSTAATT is in­ten­tion­al­ly de­lay­ing the process.

“They (COSTAATT) keep on ask­ing for bank­ing in­for­ma­tion and then they will come back and say some peo­ple’s in­for­ma­tion was wrong and then they’ll ask every­one to re­send their in­for­ma­tion again and this cy­cle would con­tin­ue where every month there’s a new is­sue,” they al­so claimed.

The stu­dents said they were told to check with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, as the pay­ments now fall un­der Gov­ern­ment’s re­mit.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly on the is­sue.

“The in­for­ma­tion re­quired was sent to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion on June 24, 2022. Pay­ments are be­ing processed cur­rent­ly,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

When pressed for more de­tails, the Min­is­ter sug­gest­ed Guardian Me­dia con­tact COSTAATT.

COSTAATT pres­i­dent Dr Gillian Paul said she sym­pa­thised with the stu­dents but they were part­ly to blame for the de­lay.

Paul said the pay­ment and stu­dent in­for­ma­tion were sent to the min­istry in No­vem­ber 2021 but sev­er­al is­sues were flagged.

“The min­istry made a re­quest that the in­for­ma­tion that was sub­mit­ted must be com­plete­ly ac­cu­rate and a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time was spent get­ting a fair­ly large num­ber of stu­dents to sub­mit ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion and that was large­ly re­spon­si­ble for the de­lay, then I fell ill with COVID-19, so that added an­oth­er de­lay,” Paul said.

Paul said some stu­dents had closed off their bank ac­counts dur­ing the sus­pen­sion of stipend pay­ments while oth­ers sub­mit­ted in­cor­rect per­son­al in­for­ma­tion.

She pres­i­dent said in some cas­es, stu­dents would take weeks to re­spond to their re­quests for up­dat­ed in­for­ma­tion.

Paul said the min­istry in­sist­ed on one com­pre­hen­sive clean list of da­ta and not a steady stream of cor­rec­tions, adding the sys­tem meant that “Pe­ter paid for Paul.”

How­ev­er, Paul said she sym­pa­thised with the stu­dents and now that sys­tem will be changed.

“In­stead of it be­ing man­aged at the cam­pus, the stu­dents will reg­is­ter for phys­i­cal train­ing at the Of­fice of the Reg­is­trar, so the da­ta will be sent au­to­mat­i­cal­ly and not through the dif­fer­ent nurs­ing co­or­di­na­tors,” she said.

Paul said this was a learn­ing process and as­sured that stu­dents will be paid all that is owed to them.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored