GUARDIAN ME­DIA NEWS­ROOM

With days to go be­fore the new aca­d­e­m­ic year be­gins and the na­tion’s schools re­open, dozens of teach­ers staged a demon­stra­tion out­side the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's head of­fice, protest­ing over what they say are in­ef­fi­cien­cies with their UNIMED Group Health Plan.

Ac­cord­ing to TTUTA's pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin, thou­sands of teach­ers are dis­tressed as claims are tak­ing over a year to be processed and paid.

“The em­ploy­er has no hes­i­ta­tion in de­duct­ing the dues for this plan,” Lum Kin said.  “How­ev­er, mem­bers who are claim­ing are not get­ting the sub­se­quent re­mit­tance of their claims.”

“It was a process that took rough­ly four weeks.  Now, we are speak­ing about 13 months,” he re­port­ed.

The teach­ers’ union boss al­so re­vealed that there are hun­dreds of teach­ers who are yet to be added to the group health plan be­cause of sev­er­al ad­min­is­tra­tive is­sues em­a­nat­ing from the Min­istry.

He said this has forced teach­ers to pur­chase ad­di­tion­al in­sur­ance, there­by adding to their fi­nan­cial bur­dens.

“You can un­der­stand the frus­tra­tion of per­sons hav­ing to come in­to the Min­istry, do the nec­es­sary doc­u­men­ta­tion and then be­ing told they have no ev­i­dence of them ap­ply­ing for [the plan],” the TTUTA pres­i­dent said. 

“We are say­ing, even fur­ther, the en­rol­ment should be an au­to­mat­ic en­rol­ment, be­cause the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has the records of all em­ploy­ees,” he added.

This is the third pub­lic demon­stra­tion from the teach­ers’ union over this mat­ter. TTUTA warns that if noth­ing is done, mem­bers will ex­er­cise all pos­si­bil­i­ties open to them, un­til the mat­ter is re­solved.