The T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion says teach­ers are un­hap­py with the 2022/2023 Bud­get, as the in­crease in fu­el prices makes it even more dif­fi­cult for them to sur­vive.

TTUTA pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah De-Fre­itas made the com­ment on Tues­day as she staged a one-woman protest out­side the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain.

Hold­ing a plac­ard with the mes­sage, “Teach­ers have chil­dren too,” Tekah De-Fre­itas said many teach­ers have been un­able to cope with the ris­ing cost of liv­ing.

“How do we ex­pect our ed­u­ca­tors to sur­vive on that when they have to trav­el from San­gre Grande to Pa­lo Seco to teach? When they have to trav­el from Va­len­cia to Rio Claro to teach. When they have to feed their fam­i­lies and con­tin­ue to prop up the sys­tem,” she said.

With the union’s mem­bers pre­vent­ed from tak­ing in­dus­tri­al ac­tion by an in­junc­tion filed by the Min­istry of Labour on Sun­day evening, Tekah De-Fre­itas said she was more than will­ing to car­ry on the fight alone.

She added that all teach­ers are en­ti­tled to leave and day-offs from their job.

“Our leave en­ti­tle­ment is en­shrined in the law. And so that can­not be in­ter­fered with and we are look­ing for­ward to that part of the mat­ter be­ing ad­dressed prop­er­ly when the mat­ter is heard,” she said.

Both Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, in sep­a­rate ac­counts on Mon­day, said Gov­ern­ment could not af­ford more than the pro­posed four per cent wage of­fer to pub­lic ser­vants.

But Tekah De-Fre­itas be­lieves that with the re­cent Bud­get, the plight of teach­ers con­tin­ues to be un­fair­ly ig­nored. She said the ex­ec­u­tive will meet soon to de­cide on the next course of ac­tion. How­ev­er, she said teach­ers will wear their union colours every Tues­day in protest.

“We can­not and will not al­low our rights, our le­gal rights and en­ti­tle­ments to be tak­en away from us, to be in­fringed up­on. And so as pres­i­dent, I am start­ing this charge and stand­ing here for how­ev­er long it takes, do­ing it how­ev­er many times I need to do it to get the state and to get the pub­lic to un­der­stand our teach­ers de­serve bet­ter.”