TTUTA: Let market survey be the guide to teachers’ salaries

Teachers should be paid salaries equivalent to those in the private sector. This was one issue raised when Tobago’s teachers came together to discuss their issues at the Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers’ Association’s (TTUTA) Tobago District Convention last Friday at the Signal Hill Secondary School. The theme was Take a Stand for Teachers.

Tobago’s TTUTA head Claudette Governor told those in attendance that Tobagonians needed to view teachers as critical to education and national development.

“We must all stand for well resourced, safe, and secure schools, which are not physically dilapidated and scanty but which provide a proper learning environment for our students and good working conditions for our teachers,” Governor said. She encouraged parents and the national community to help teachers in nurturing students.

Governor said the CPO was preparing a document for TTUTA about the application of data collected in a recent External Labour Market Survey. TTUTA’s main concern was that all positions in the teaching services receive a salary as close as possible to the corresponding survey. The CPO’s prime concerns include affordability and sustainability of teacher’s salaries, as well as the relationships between pay grades.

Negotiations have been in progress for more than two and a half years.  Governor said TTUTA was committed to the use of the survey because it brought superior salary increases which would not be obtained through salary percentages. Secretary for the Division of Education, Youth Affairs and Sport Whitney Alfred inducted new teachers at the convention.

“Tobago today is not the Tobago that it was 50 years ago,” he said. “Our society, our nation, our twin island state, seems to be spiralling out of control into an abyss, a bottomless pit. The institutions to reverse this dangerous trend are our schools, the church, the home, and the family.”

Alfred assured teachers the division was indeed taking a stand for them. The division planned to create additional teaching and administrative posts for secondary school teachers. Alfred said he made a “verbal request for a portion of land, which is being purchased, for the relocation of the Scarborough Secondary School.” He also said $2 million had been allocated for reconstruction of the Scarborough RC School.