Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has ac­knowl­edged con­cerns raised by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA), say­ing a for­mal re­sponse ad­dress­ing the time­line for im­ple­ment­ing teach­ers’ new salaries has al­ready been draft­ed, signed and will be de­liv­ered in due course.

How­ev­er, up to yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, TTUTA pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe said the union had not yet re­ceived the cor­re­spon­dence.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side the Red House yes­ter­day, Tan­coo said, “Yes, I’m writ­ing to TTUTA a re­sponse as we speak. The re­sponse has been draft­ed and signed. They will get their re­sponse in due course.” He de­clined to pro­vide de­tails on what the re­sponse would con­tain.

The lat­est de­vel­op­ment fol­lows months of un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing the pay­ment of a five per cent salary in­crease agreed to in April 2025 for the pe­ri­od 2020–2023. Teach­ers are still await­ing both the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the re­vised salaries and the pay­ment of out­stand­ing back­pay, es­ti­mat­ed at $730 mil­lion.

Frus­trat­ed by the lack of a de­fin­i­tive time­line, TTUTA on Mon­day hand-de­liv­ered a let­ter to the Min­istry of Fi­nance seek­ing clar­i­ty on when the long-await­ed fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits will take ef­fect.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Ashe said teach­ers were ini­tial­ly told the mon­ey would be paid by mid-2025 and lat­er by Jan­u­ary 2026. “Jan­u­ary 2026 would have come and gone al­ready. We are in Feb­ru­ary and we have not seen any sign of this new re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­age for our mem­ber­ship,” he said.

The let­ter re­quests a re­sponse with­in sev­en days, in­clud­ing con­firmed dates for salary im­ple­men­ta­tion and back­pay. Ashe said re­peat­ed at­tempts to se­cure a meet­ing with Tan­coo, through emails and phone calls, have gone unan­swered.

“We want de­fin­i­tive dates,” he said, adding that the union has not yet met with the min­is­ter and has tra­di­tion­al­ly dealt with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer.

Al­though TTUTA has warned it will ex­plore fur­ther op­tions if no re­sponse is re­ceived with­in a week, Ashe stressed that the union will not call on teach­ers to stay away from class­es.

“We care about the chil­dren and we are very much fa­mil­iar with the law,” he said.

Still, Ashe ac­knowl­edged grow­ing frus­tra­tion among teach­ers grap­pling with ris­ing liv­ing costs, in­creased Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Scheme (NIS) con­tri­bu­tions and high­er trans­porta­tion ex­pens­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly for those com­mut­ing to and from To­ba­go.

He al­so called on the Prime Min­is­ter to in­ter­vene, not­ing that work­ers’ rights formed a cen­tral pil­lar of her elec­tion cam­paign.