RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) says over 150 teach­ers, in­clud­ing re­tirees, are still wait­ing to re­ceive salary ar­rears owed to them for the 2020-2023 pe­ri­od, even as the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry says it has paid 95 per cent of ac­tive teach­ers their out­stand­ing back­pay.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, TTUTA pres­i­dent Crys­tal Bevin Ashe said the as­so­ci­a­tion was aware that sev­er­al teach­ers had not re­ceived their back­pay, de­spite years of cam­paign­ing for the set­tle­ment of out­stand­ing salary ar­rears.

Ashe ac­knowl­edged that staff short­ages and va­cant po­si­tions at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion had af­fect­ed the pro­cess­ing of pay­ments.

How­ev­er, he said the clerks cur­rent­ly at the min­istry had been work­ing over­time to en­sure that the out­stand­ing pay­ments were processed.

“We know that the clerks that are present­ly at the min­istry, they have been work­ing over­time, try­ing to en­sure that our mem­bers and oth­er per­sons re­ceive their back­pay in a time­ly man­ner,” he said.

Ashe said TTUTA had pro­vid­ed the min­istry with a list of teach­ers who were still await­ing pay­ment and un­der­stood that of­fi­cials were work­ing through the cas­es.

“We are hope­ful that the mem­ber­ship who would not have re­ceived their back­pay would re­ceive it in a time­ly man­ner,” he said.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath said the min­istry had al­ready dis­bursed 95 per cent of back­pay pay­ments to ac­tive teach­ers.

He said the min­istry was con­tin­u­ing to work with TTUTA to iden­ti­fy and re­solve in­di­vid­ual cas­es re­quir­ing fur­ther at­ten­tion.

These in­clude over­pay­ments, hu­man re­source queries, dis­crep­an­cies in em­ploy­ment records and oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tive or pay­roll-re­lat­ed is­sues re­quir­ing ver­i­fi­ca­tion and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion be­fore pay­ments could be fi­nalised, he ex­plained.

Dr Dowlath said pay­ments to re­tired teach­ers were al­so on­go­ing as the min­istry worked to ful­fil its fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions to el­i­gi­ble ed­u­ca­tors.

He as­sured teach­ers whose pay­ments re­mained out­stand­ing that their cas­es were re­ceiv­ing at­ten­tion and every ef­fort was be­ing made to re­solve them as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

The back­pay is­sue has been a long­stand­ing source of frus­tra­tion among teach­ers, who have cam­paigned for the set­tle­ment of their out­stand­ing pay­ments af­ter wait­ing sev­er­al years for the mon­ey owed to them.

Dr Dowlath said the min­istry val­ued its con­tin­ued en­gage­ment with TTUTA and re­mained com­mit­ted to re­solv­ing mat­ters af­fect­ing the teach­ing fra­ter­ni­ty.