NARIS­SA FRAS­ER

Just over a month af­ter the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry said it was work­ing on re­sum­ing the Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (EAP) for its staff, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) says work­ers are frus­trat­ed as no fur­ther up­date has been pro­vid­ed.

Re­ports of the pro­gramme’s dis­con­tin­u­a­tion for teach­ers be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing in ear­ly Jan­u­ary. How­ev­er, TTUTA lat­er clar­i­fied it ap­plied to all staff un­der the teach­ing ser­vice, which in­cludes so­cial work­ers, guid­ance coun­sel­lors, etc.

The min­istry then is­sued a press re­lease on Jan­u­ary 9 say­ing it was "ac­tive­ly ad­dress­ing" the mat­ter to "en­sure em­ploy­ees have ac­cess to ef­fec­tive, ef­fi­cient and sus­tain­able psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port.” It added that fur­ther up­dates would be pro­vid­ed once arrange­ments were fi­nalised. But the sit­u­a­tion re­mains un­changed. Work­ers, who wished to re­main anony­mous, told Guardian Me­dia they are still un­able to ac­cess the ser­vice.

Asked on Mon­day what up­date has been pro­vid­ed since the press re­lease, TTUTA pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe said, “Noth­ing. Not one thing.” He said TTUTA wrote to the min­istry up to two weeks ago but got no re­sponse. “(Work­ers) feel­ing frus­trat­ed. That’s the on­ly word I could use be­cause the fact is, it’s some­thing that is there to sup­port them in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties,” he said. “If they’re hav­ing per­son­al is­sues or some­times even just to deal with the chil­dren, you need to have that av­enue.”

He said it must be made clear that the ser­vice wasn’t just pro­vid­ed out of good­will but is part of the col­lec­tive agree­ment that work­ers signed. “… And you just re­move it? They're re­al­ly feel­ing dis­grun­tled and they’re ask­ing about it all the time. TTUTA is in­un­dat­ed with calls ask­ing when this thing is go­ing to be re­in­stat­ed.”

The min­istry’s Jan­u­ary press re­lease al­so said fund­ing for the EAP was al­lo­cat­ed from the fis­cal 2026 bud­get, and dis­missed claims staff at­tempt­ing to ac­cess the ser­vices were told to pay $450. On the lat­ter, Ashe said TTUTA has the re­ceipts to prove it. He said copies will be shared with the me­dia lat­er this week with an of­fi­cial state­ment.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath said to send all ques­tions via What­sApp. The ques­tions were sent at 12:39 pm and Guardian Me­dia is await­ing a re­sponse.