The Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) says it is now wait­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to fi­nalise the 2020 to 2023 salary set­tle­ment for teach­ers.

In a memo to mem­bers, TTUTA ex­plained that while it signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment (MoA) with the Per­son­nel De­part­ment on April 18 this year, the agree­ment must first be rat­i­fied by Cab­i­net be­fore it can be im­ple­ment­ed. Once ap­proved, the Min­istries of Fi­nance and Ed­u­ca­tion will be in­struct­ed to car­ry out the set­tle­ment.

TTUTA said Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Com­man­der Dr Daryl Din­di­al has as­sured that a Cab­i­net Note has been sub­mit­ted to Fi­nance Min­is­ter De­ven­dranath Tan­coo. The note con­tains both the MoA and a new In­ter­im Al­lowance for Third Sched­ule Of­fi­cers, cov­er­ing the pe­ri­ods 2014–2017 and 2017–2020.

In April, just days be­fore the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, TTUTA ac­cept­ed the CPO’s of­fer of a five per cent salary in­crease for 2020 to 2023. The of­fer in­clud­ed a spread of one per cent, one per cent, and three per cent over the pe­ri­od, along with con­sol­i­da­tion of the Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance (CO­LA) and oth­er im­proved terms and con­di­tions for mem­bers of the teach­ing ser­vice.

TTUTA said it has done every­thing with­in its pow­er to ad­dress the mat­ter and now an­tic­i­pates that the pro­vi­sions of the MoA will be re­flect­ed in the 2025–2026 Na­tion­al Bud­get.

“TTUTA an­tic­i­pates that Cab­i­net’s de­ci­sion and the Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion will de­ter­mine the time­line for pay­out,” the memo stat­ed.

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so in­di­cat­ed it is pre­pared to take “all nec­es­sary ac­tion” should cir­cum­stances re­quire.