Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) has con­firmed that teach­ers will not re­ceive a Christ­mas back­pay due to “staffing is­sues,” but the union is con­fi­dent the mon­ey owed to them will be paid ear­ly in 2026.

This was the word from Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Dr Daryl Din­di­al yes­ter­day dur­ing a “meet and greet” with the TTUTA ex­ec­u­tive, which the union de­scribed as “very fruit­ful, very cor­dial, and very pro­fes­sion­al.”

Speak­ing af­ter­wards, TTUTA pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe told Guardian Me­dia that he knew teach­ers would be pa­tient­ly await­ing news on if any head­way had been made with re­spect to their new salaries.

Ashe an­nounced, “There’s a cab­i­net note go­ing in to­mor­row, please God, so once that cab­i­net note is re­ceived and it is dis­cussed and so on, we will hope­ful­ly get the new salary by Jan­u­ary.”

He added, “Back­pay, as we said, it will take a lit­tle longer, so we’re hop­ing for the end of the first quar­ter as we would have promised you.”

Short­ly be­fore the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, TTUTA, un­der for­mer pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin, signed a five per cent salary in­crease with the CPO. How­ev­er, no monies have been paid to teach­ers since.

Ashe said the CPO has in­formed him that while the mon­ey will be paid, it can­not hap­pen right now.

“We have re­ceived the com­mit­ment from Dr Din­di­al that yes, your amount of mon­ey in terms of the ad­vance, in terms of your back pay, will be paid to you. How­ev­er, it can­not be paid to you at this point in time be­cause of is­sues with staffing and so on. So, it will be paid to you in ear­ly next year, more than like­ly, hope­ful­ly Jan­u­ary,” Ashe said.

Last week, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo al­so con­firmed that on­ly the PSA will re­ceive back­pay in De­cem­ber.

Mean­while, CPO Din­di­al ex­pressed deep re­spect for the union.

“The as­so­ci­a­tion has con­sis­tent­ly ap­proached its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties with thought­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, strate­gic vi­sion and a fo­cus on the big­ger pic­ture,” Din­di­al said via me­dia re­lease.

He al­so com­mend­ed TTUTA for its stead­fast ad­vo­ca­cy on be­half of its mem­bers, not­ing the union’s con­sis­tent pur­suit of pro­fes­sion­al ex­cel­lence and its fo­cus on ad­vanc­ing the na­tion­al in­ter­est.

Din­di­al de­scribed the meet­ing as “high­ly pro­duc­tive,” say­ing it es­tab­lished a sol­id plat­form for con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion. He al­so ex­tend­ed Christ­mas greet­ings to TTUTA and the na­tion’s teach­ers, wish­ing them a joy­ful sea­son of peace, hap­pi­ness, and pros­per­i­ty.

Din­di­al al­so com­mend­ed for­mer TTUTA pres­i­dent Lum Kin for his “en­dur­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the ad­vance­ment of the na­tion’s teach­ers and for fos­ter­ing a con­struc­tive work­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween TTUTA and the Per­son­nel De­part­ment.”