TTUTA: workers frustrated as EAP still halted

Naris­sa Fras­er

Just over a month af­ter the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion said it was work­ing to re­sume the Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion says staff re­main with­out ac­cess and no fur­ther up­date has come.

Re­ports sur­faced in ear­ly Jan­u­ary that the pro­gramme had been dis­con­tin­ued for teach­ers. TTUTA lat­er clar­i­fied the halt af­fects all staff un­der the Teach­ing Ser­vice, in­clud­ing so­cial work­ers and guid­ance coun­sel­lors.

In a Jan­u­ary 9 press re­lease, the min­istry said it was “ac­tive­ly ad­dress­ing” the is­sue to “en­sure em­ploy­ees have ac­cess to ef­fec­tive, ef­fi­cient and sus­tain­able psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port,” and promised fur­ther up­dates once arrange­ments were fi­nalised. No up­date has fol­lowed.

Work­ers, who asked not to be named, told Guardian Me­dia they still can­not ac­cess the ser­vice.

Asked on Mon­day what progress the min­istry has made since the re­lease, TTUTA pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe replied, “Noth­ing. Not one thing.” He said TTUTA wrote to the min­istry up to two weeks ago but re­ceived no re­sponse.

“(Work­ers) feel­ing frus­trat­ed. That’s the on­ly word I could use be­cause the fact is, it’s some­thing that is there to sup­port them in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties,” he said. “If they’re hav­ing per­son­al is­sues or some­times even just to deal with the chil­dren, you need to have that av­enue.”

He said the EAP forms part of the col­lec­tive agree­ment. “… And you just re­move it? They’re re­al­ly feel­ing dis­grun­tled and they’re ask­ing about it all the time. TTUTA is in­un­dat­ed with calls ask­ing when this thing is go­ing to be re­in­stat­ed.”

The min­istry al­so said in Jan­u­ary that fund­ing for the EAP was al­lo­cat­ed in the 2026 fis­cal bud­get and re­ject­ed claims that staff were asked to pay $450 to ac­cess ser­vices. On that point, Ashe said TTUTA has re­ceipts. He said the union will share copies with the me­dia lat­er this week in an of­fi­cial state­ment.

He added that TTUTA has tried to con­tact Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo with­out suc­cess. “We tried e-mail­ing him on mul­ti­ple oc­ca­sions, call­ing him – just up to last week Fri­day – and no re­sponse what­so­ev­er.”

On Mon­day, the union vis­it­ed his Port of Spain of­fice to de­liv­er a for­mal let­ter.

Tan­coo told Guardian Me­dia the let­ter may have ar­rived while he was out of of­fice and said he would not com­ment on cor­re­spon­dence he has not seen. He said he left his of­fice at 9:45 am to at­tend a Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es Com­mit­tee meet­ing and lat­er went to the air­port for Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­par­ture to St Kitts and Nevis for the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing.

“With re­gards to the oth­er at­tempts to con­tact me, you were able to. A lot of the com­ments I have heard from TTUTA has (sic) been via what the union would have shared with the me­dia. I think it is more prac­ti­cal and ef­fec­tive not to have de­lib­er­a­tions via jour­nal­ists. I will re­spond to the cor­re­spon­dence when I get it,” he said.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath asked that ques­tions be sent via What­sApp. They were sent at 12:39 pm, and Guardian Me­dia is await­ing a re­sponse.