After months of calling for a meeting with the Chief Personnel Officer (CPO) to negotiate an increase in their salaries, among other things, the Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA) executive came out of that meeting all smiles yesterday.
Although no increase has been decided on, association president Antonia De Freitas said TTUTA was happy with the meeting.
During the two-and-a-half-hour meeting, teachers marched in front of the CPO’s office on Alexandra Street, St Clair.
After the meeting, De Freitas announced that the CPO had agreed to continue meeting with teachers monthly to treat with issues that have been plaguing them for years.
“This was a meeting that was postponed from mid-December and we believe it is important that we continue the discussion on negotiations and other issues even as we end the year, so in the new year we will know that our teachers’ needs will be met,” De Freitas said.
Former TTUTA head, Lynsley Doodhai had called on the CPO to meet with the association on multiple occasions during his tenure.
The association said its members have not gotten a salary increase since 2014 and in months gone by, they have strengthened their call for an opportunity to negotiate, taking to the streets of Port-of-Spain in October and taking a day of “rest and reflection” in early November.
De Freitas said the CPO had not given any timeline for when the issues, including the salary increases, would be rectified.
However, she deemed the meeting a success, saying, “For the first meeting in a long time, we would have gotten positive responses from the CPO.”
She said TTUTA was informed that the CPO submitted proposals to the Ministry of Finance for the increase in salaries and had received feedback.
She said in addition to salaries, there was also the issue of teaching assistants who had completed their formal education but were not being promoted to Teacher 1 positions.
