DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

More than 400 teach­ers have not re­ceived their back­pay, de­spite a promise by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to pay them by the end of the year. This was con­firmed by T&T Uni­fied Teacher’s As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) first vice pres­i­dent Adesh Dwari­ka, who said the union has been gath­er­ing da­ta on the mat­ter.

Dwari­ka said hun­dreds of teach­ers re­port­ed that they had not re­ceived what Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert had ini­tial­ly promised would be paid by Christ­mas.

He said it was up­set­ting that the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry pushed the dead­line to De­cem­ber 31 and still failed to meet its tar­get, es­pe­cial­ly since TTUTA had signed the four per cent agree­ment with the chief per­son­nel of­fi­cer in Ju­ly.

“The as­so­ci­a­tion is deeply, deeply con­cerned,” said Dwari­ka who point­ed out the min­istry had ap­prox­i­mate­ly six months to get its house in or­der.

“They should not be scram­bling now to find em­ploy­ees from the Min­istry of Fi­nance, from dif­fer­ent min­istries, to come to do paysheets for teach­ers. That should have been done as soon as the as­so­ci­a­tion would have signed the agree­ment,” he said.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly blamed the hol­i­days for the de­lay but as­sured ef­forts to com­plete the process will re­sume this month, though she did not pro­vide a new dead­line.

“Back­pay com­pu­ta­tions con­tin­ued over the Christ­mas sea­son. Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is typ­i­cal­ly re­duced at this time due to the hol­i­days and some staff mem­bers do plan time off with their fam­i­lies. As we en­ter Jan­u­ary 2024, the work con­tin­ues to com­plete the back­pay process for all teach­ers, in­clud­ing re­tirees,” she said.

Mean­while, TTUTA pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin said while schools will re­open to­day, the union has to wait un­til the of­fi­cial restart of op­er­a­tions to de­ter­mine how many will open their doors.

Lum Kin said TTUTA nev­er re­ceived a list of the schools that re­quired emer­gency re­pairs over the hol­i­days, though they were in­formed some work would take place.

He is al­so wor­ried about schools on the north coast af­ter a land­slide made the road im­pass­able on Sat­ur­day.

“TTUTA is quite con­cerned about the safe­ty of our ed­u­ca­tors who have to tra­verse on that North Coast Road to re­port for du­ty to­mor­row (to­day) and we will ad­vise them to ex­er­cise cau­tion and if they be­lieve that there is a threat that they in­form their ad­min­is­tra­tor,” he said.

Lum Kin is al­so con­cerned about the sit­u­a­tion at the Palmiste Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, which was de­stroyed by a fire in De­cem­ber.

He said some of the stu­dents will have class­es at the new­ly opened Ed­in­burgh Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, while oth­ers will be ac­com­mo­dat­ed at the Long­denville Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, rais­ing con­cerns about the ad­min­is­tra­tion and ac­count­ing of both com­pounds. He not­ed that the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre is some dis­tance away from the Palmiste school, which may pose a chal­lenge to staff, pupils and their par­ents.