TTUTA is urg­ing all teach­ers to hold stead­fast to its po­si­tion that any re­turn to in-per­son school­ing must be done safe­ly.

This mes­sage was sent in a state­ment af­ter the Na­tion­al Of­fi­cers of TTUTA walked out of a meet­ing yes­ter­day with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

The union im­me­di­ate­ly sent out a state­ment say­ing that it will ad­here to its po­si­tion that any vari­a­tion of terms and con­di­tions of ed­u­ca­tors can­not be un­der­tak­en by the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion. It said such mat­ters must be tabled for dis­cus­sion be­tween TTUTA and the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer.

In the state­ment, TTUTA al­so ad­vised mem­bers not to en­gage in any ac­tion that the union has ob­ject­ed to and said, “Mem­bers must be will­ing to stand strong in the face of these bul­ly­ing tac­tics! It is on­ly through a unit­ed front will ed­u­ca­tors over­come these un­fair prac­tices!”

TTUTA ex­plained the meet­ing with the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry was meant to dis­cuss plans for Term II, Jan­u­ary to April, 2022 and Term III, April to Ju­ly, 2022.

TTUTA said the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion ref­er­enced the draft doc­u­ment which was sent to TTUTA late last week for its con­sid­er­a­tion. It said the doc­u­ment con­tained very pre­cise plans for the op­er­a­tions of Sec­ondary schools, but there were few de­tails pre­sent­ed for the re­open­ing of pri­ma­ry schools.

TTUTA said its pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah-De Fre­itas in­di­cat­ed to the Min­is­ter that the doc­u­ment sent to TTUTA in­clud­ed a num­ber of items that the union had pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed it was not in agree­ment with.

The union said, “TTUTA is fed up with the con­de­scen­sion of the Min­is­ter and the bla­tant dis­re­gard for the wel­fare of ed­u­ca­tors.”

TTUTA al­so ac­cused the Min­is­ter of be­ing “dis­re­spect­ful” and “di­vi­sive.”