Dowlath: Teachers not required to pay EAP fees

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

No in­struc­tions were ever is­sued by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion re­quir­ing teach­ers or staff to pay for ser­vices un­der the Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (EAP), Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath told Par­lia­ment last Fri­day.

Dowlath was re­spond­ing to a query from St Ann’s East MP Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, who cit­ed re­cent re­ports sug­gest­ing that teach­ers and staff had been in­struct­ed to make pay­ments for EAP ser­vices.

“No in­struc­tions were is­sued by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to teach­ers or oth­er mem­bers of staff to pay for ser­vices un­der the Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme,” Dowlath stat­ed. “The Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme is an em­ploy­er-sup­port­ed ser­vice, and the min­istry has been ad­dress­ing out­stand­ing pay­ment mat­ters re­lat­ed to the pro­gramme. When we as­sumed of­fice, we in­her­it­ed ar­rears sub­stan­tial­ly cov­er­ing the pe­ri­od from 2023 to May 2025.”

He added that these in­her­it­ed ar­rears, to­talling $1,145,250, have now been set­tled. “Con­cerns raised by teach­ers and staff may there­fore have arisen in the con­text of these his­tor­i­cal­ly out­stand­ing pay­ments, rather than as a re­sult of any di­rec­tive is­sued by the min­istry,” Dowlath said.

He con­firmed that nor­mal ser­vice arrange­ments un­der the EAP have been re­stored and em­pha­sised that the min­istry re­mains com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing the well­be­ing of all staff.

On the is­sue of mould at the Min­istry’s Head Of­fice, Dowlath clar­i­fied that tem­po­rary clo­sures oc­curred for on­ly two busi­ness hours on Jan­u­ary 5, 6, and 7, due to a mal­func­tion­ing Heat­ing, Ven­ti­la­tion, and Air Con­di­tion­ing (HVAC) unit.

“The unit has since been re­paired. Nor­mal op­er­a­tions have re­sumed. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with UDe­COTT, the min­istry is ex­e­cut­ing short-, medi­um-, and long-term plans to en­sure the HVAC sys­tem’s re­li­a­bil­i­ty,” he said.

He fur­ther stat­ed that re­ports of mould-like sub­stances have been ad­dressed. A sani­ti­sa­tion com­pa­ny con­duct­ed com­pre­hen­sive clean­ing of each floor in Tow­ers A and B to en­sure a safe and com­fort­able en­vi­ron­ment for staff. All staff were able to per­form their tasks ef­fec­tive­ly, ex­cept on the sched­uled days al­lo­cat­ed for sani­tis­ing their re­spec­tive floors.

Re­gard­ing the School Lap­top Pro­gramme, Dowlath con­firmed that 18,000 lap­tops, lap­top bags, and head­sets were or­dered for Form One stu­dents en­ter­ing the 2025/2026 aca­d­e­m­ic year fol­low­ing the 2025 SEA re­sults. “To date, all 18,000 de­vices have been re­ceived, and all el­i­gi­ble Form One stu­dents in Trinidad and To­ba­go have re­ceived a lap­top,” he said.

Dowlath added that last Au­gust Cab­i­net des­ig­nat­ed TSTT as the state en­ter­prise re­spon­si­ble for sup­ply­ing the lap­tops and ac­ces­sories un­der a con­tract val­ued at $135,000,000. The to­tal cost per lap­top, bag, and head­set is $7,500, and to date, $67,500,000 has been paid to TSTT.