New­ly-ap­point­ed The Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Crys­tal Bevin Ashe says he wants to re­turn to the ne­go­ti­a­tion ta­ble to ad­just the wage agree­ment his pre­de­ces­sor signed off on with the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day, hours af­ter de­feat­ing Mar­tin Lum Kin in Tues­day’s elec­tion, Ashe said he hoped the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, through the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO), would be amenable to such ac­tion, as he said they were look­ing at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment’s in­di­ca­tion that will ho­n­our its promise to start ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion at 10 per cent.

“We would have seen what the Pub­lic Ser­vice (As­so­ci­a­tion) would have got­ten and so on and we’re hop­ing that the present Gov­ern­ment would be kind enough, such that they would be will­ing to re­turn to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble with TTUTA and rat­i­fy that. That’s our hope more or less.”

The PSA was one of the unions which re­fused to ac­cept the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion’s four per cent wage of­fer.

TTUTA, un­der Lum Kin, agreed to sign off on a five per cent of­fer for the pe­ri­od 2020-2023, spread at one per cent, one per cent and three per cent in April. The Cost-of-Liv­ing Al­lowance (CO­LA) was al­so ad­just­ed to $51 from Oc­to­ber 31, 2023.

Ashe, rep­re­sent­ing the Sec­ondary Schools Di­vi­sion (SSI), se­cured 3,546 votes, emerg­ing as the clear choice over Lum Kin, who re­ceived 1,019 votes, and Randy Lall, who gar­nered 773 votes.

Look­ing for­ward to his as­sign­ment, Ashe said, “We in­tend to ad­vo­cate strong­ly. We in­tend to en­sure that the min­istry does what it is sup­posed to do be­cause the Ed­u­ca­tion Act clear­ly says what are the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and we just are there to sup­port them.”

He said school in­fra­struc­ture was al­so key on his agen­da.

“The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion have some poli­cies, some pos­i­tive poli­cies, but at the end of the day the in­fra­struc­ture in the schools and so on, they have to be in place. So, there are cer­tain things that TTUTA will ad­vo­cate for and that we have been ad­vo­cat­ing for for a while, but we will do it a lit­tle more vo­cif­er­ous­ly. We’re look­ing at things like short­age of teach­ers and so on. There are num­ber of schools where teach­ing staff, more or less, they short, so prin­ci­pals have to per­form the du­ties and so on, any­thing with­out the suf­fi­cient com­ple­ment of staff that they should have and that shouldn’t be. In ad­di­tion to that, you have a lot of per­sons who are act­ing in po­si­tions and not be­ing up­grad­ed in a time­ly man­ner.”

In oth­er key TTUTA po­si­tions, Nigel Fi­garo was elect­ed sec­ond vice pres­i­dent (4,395 votes); Bar­ry Joel De­saine claimed the third vice pres­i­dent po­si­tion (4,033); Sue-Anne Marchan was cho­sen as gen­er­al sec­re­tary (3,460); and Dil­lon Har­racks­ingh was elect­ed as trea­sur­er (3,814).

The re­sults were for­mal­ly con­firmed in a me­dia state­ment is­sued by TTUTA Elec­tions Com­mis­sion sec­re­tary Ed­ward Ram­sumair yes­ter­day.

Re­gard­ing his first name, Ashe thanked his par­ents for nam­ing him, say­ing it made him re­silient.