Ne­go­ti­a­tions for a col­lec­tive agree­ment cov­er­ing the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 1, 2020, to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023, have of­fi­cial­ly be­gun be­tween the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO), Com­man­der Dr. Daryl Din­di­al, and the Ex­ec­u­tive of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA).

A state­ment from the CPO’s Of­fice notes that to­day’s meet­ing fol­lowed TTUTA’s sub­mis­sion of their pro­pos­al for the pe­ri­od un­der con­sid­er­a­tion.  The meet­ing was at­tend­ed by TTUTA’s Pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin and the union’s Ex­ec­u­tive Team.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, Com­man­der Din­di­al com­mend­ed TTUTA for its pro­pos­al, as well as its in­sight, re­search, da­ta and rec­om­men­da­tions in ad­dress­ing sev­er­al key is­sues with which its mem­ber­ship is con­front­ed.  In ad­di­tion, he ex­pressed his grat­i­tude on be­half of the State to all mem­bers of the Teach­ing Ser­vice for their con­tin­ued con­tri­bu­tions to the de­vel­op­ment of T&T’s ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor, in­clu­sive of shap­ing the minds of up­com­ing gen­er­a­tions.

Among the is­sues dis­cussed dur­ing to­day’s meet­ing be­tween the teach­ers’ union and the CPO were:

   ●   Job Eval­u­a­tion Ex­er­cise for the Teach­ing Ser­vice;

   ●   Work of the Tech­ni­cal Sub-Com­mit­tee on Mar­ket Sur­vey;

   ●   Sab­bat­i­cal leave;

   ●   Oc­ca­sion­al leave;

   ●   Tele­phone Al­lowance;

   ●   Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (EAP);

   ●   Com­mut­ed Trav­el­ling Al­lowance;

   ●   Pay­ment for Mark­ing School-Based As­sess­ment (SBAs);

   ●   Trav­el­ling Al­lowance and Fa­cil­i­ties.

The CPO al­so con­firmed that meet­ings with oth­er Unions and As­so­ci­a­tions are sched­uled to con­tin­ue through­out this week and in­to next week, fol­low­ing in­struc­tions from the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert MP.