Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Teach­ers across Trinidad and To­ba­go are of­fi­cial­ly with­draw­ing all ser­vices out­side their strict job de­scrip­tions, with the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) ad­vis­ing ed­u­ca­tors to take men­tal health days as frus­tra­tion over un­paid back­pay in­ten­si­fies.

The union has drawn a firm line, con­firm­ing that it is ful­ly pre­pared to de­fend any teacher who faces push­back or dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion over the mea­sures.

The es­ca­la­tion fol­lows a TTUTA press con­fer­ence held yes­ter­day, trig­gered by the Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view, which re­vealed that ed­u­ca­tors would not re­ceive their out­stand­ing back­pay un­til fis­cal 2027.

TTUTA re­ject­ed the new time­line, not­ing that the funds had ini­tial­ly been promised for pay­ment in 2025, and de­scribed the lat­est de­lay as un­ac­cept­able.

Speak­ing at the union’s head of­fice in Carlsen Field, TTUTA pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of re­peat­ed­ly fail­ing to ho­n­our its fi­nan­cial com­mit­ments.

He de­scribed the on­go­ing de­lays as a demon­stra­tion of “bla­tant dis­re­spect” to­wards both teach­ers and their rep­re­sen­ta­tive union.

Ed­u­ca­tors have been wait­ing for more than a year for the dis­burse­ment of funds linked to a salary agree­ment signed on April 18, 2025. Ac­cord­ing to Ashe, a ver­bal com­mit­ment had been made for pay­ments to be­gin in Ju­ly 2025.

“Ju­ly came and ed­u­ca­tors re­ceived noth­ing. De­cem­ber came, noth­ing. Jan­u­ary came, noth­ing,” Ashe said.

Ad­dress­ing the new­ly pro­posed 2027 time­line, Ashe crit­i­cised the State’s con­tin­ued de­lays.

“It would seem as if we’re in World Cup sea­son and the goal­post just keeps shift­ing left, right, back, front and cen­tre. You can’t sim­ply shift the goal­post at your whim and fan­cy,” he said.

“We are not ask­ing for a hand­out. We are ask­ing for what ed­u­ca­tors have worked for,” he said. “They have paid with their sweat, their tears and their labour. All they are ask­ing for is what is due to them.”

At the cen­tre of the dis­pute is a $900 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion ear­marked and ap­proved in the 2025 fis­cal bud­get to cov­er the State’s oblig­a­tions to ed­u­ca­tors.

How­ev­er, dur­ing the Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view, the al­lo­ca­tion was re­moved from the re­vised bud­get es­ti­mates, leav­ing the promised back­pay un­ac­count­ed for and de­lay­ing any im­me­di­ate dis­burse­ment.

The Min­istry of Fi­nance has stat­ed that tech­ni­cal process­es are still re­quired to quan­ti­fy the ex­act amounts owed to in­di­vid­ual teach­ers be­fore pay­ments can be made.

TTUTA has re­ject­ed that ex­pla­na­tion, ar­gu­ing that the $900 mil­lion fig­ure had al­ready been ver­i­fied and fi­nalised with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) dur­ing salary ne­go­ti­a­tions.

The Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) has ex­pressed con­cern over the po­ten­tial im­pact on stu­dents and school op­er­a­tions.

NPTA pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art said the union’s work-to-rule ac­tion had al­ready af­fect­ed teacher at­ten­dance at some schools and warned that any es­ca­la­tion could dis­rupt na­tion­al as­sess­ments.

“The Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion is ful­ly aware of the le­git­i­mate con­cerns ex­pressed by our na­tion’s teach­ers re­lat­ing to the con­tin­ued de­lay and un­kept promis­es on the pay­ment of out­stand­ing back­pay, re­sult­ing to­day in some in­stances with poor teacher at­ten­dance, with the pos­si­bil­i­ty to­mor­row of fur­ther height­ened ac­tions at a time when our stu­dents are due to face na­tion­al tests,” Stew­art said.

Mak­ing an ap­peal to the Min­istries of Fi­nance and Ed­u­ca­tion, as well as TTUTA, Stew­art urged all par­ties to meet ur­gent­ly and es­tab­lish firm time­lines for pay­ment.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Michael Dowlath and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo for com­ment but was un­suc­cess­ful.