CPO tells teachers to be patient as $730M backpay remains outstanding

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor Pol­i­tics

Teach­ers re­main in the dark over their back­pay, as the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) now says he is not aware of when the pay­ment would be made, de­spite the Fi­nance Min­is­ter’s as­sur­ance of a March pay­out.

In­stead, the CPO has urged teach­ers to be “a bit pa­tient.”

The con­fu­sion ap­pears to stem from a Feb­ru­ary 27 in­ter­view be­tween Guardian Me­dia and Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, who, en route to Par­lia­ment, was ques­tioned about both back­pay and new salaries for mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA).

At the time, Tan­coo said both would be set­tled by the end of the first quar­ter of 2026. How­ev­er, while the ad­just­ed salaries have since been im­ple­ment­ed, the back­pay re­mains out­stand­ing.

Asked for an up­date on the mat­ter yes­ter­day, CPO Dr Daryl Din­di­al said he does not know about that com­mit­ment by the min­is­ter.

“So I am not aware of any com­mit­ment made to pay teach­ers back­pay this month. The dis­cus­sions I have had with the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter have been very con­sis­tent. It was about putting on the new salaries on this month and I am ad­vised that that has oc­curred.”

Speak­ing on the com­plex­i­ty of the process, the CPO said, “The teach­ing ser­vice has ap­prox­i­mate­ly 13,000 peo­ple. There’s a process to au­dit all of those files. One min­istry does all that work. It’s a sig­nif­i­cant ex­er­cise that they have to en­gage. I’m aware that ex­er­cise has start­ed, but I don’t be­lieve this is an ex­er­cise that could hap­pen overnight.”

In a mes­sage to the dis­grun­tled teach­ers, Din­di­al said, “I would say to the teach­ers to be a bit pa­tient. They are aware that it is an ex­er­cise that has to be en­gaged. I’m hope­ful that at the end of the ex­er­cise, all of the is­sues, con­sid­er­ing the out­stand­ing in­cre­ments for in­stance, is dealt with one time, and then they could pay the ar­rears.”

The back­pay fol­low­ing the five per cent wage in­crease be­tween 2020 and 2023 will cost the State $730 mil­lion.

But TTUTA pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe is not at all pleased with this lat­est de­vel­op­ment.

“That is very dis­ap­point­ing news for TTUTA here, com­ing from the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer, be­cause if his boss, which is the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, would have ar­tic­u­lat­ed on pub­lic tele­vi­sion that at the end of the first quar­ter. And when asked about it again, he seemed to be a bit per­turbed by the re­porter ask­ing him. As a mat­ter of fact, when he said I told you that al­ready, and it would have been the month of March he was talk­ing about.”

Ashe added, “If there was com­mu­ni­ca­tion by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance with the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union, we would have been able to tell him that the date he iden­ti­fied might not have been able to be a prac­ti­cal one or a log­i­cal one, and we would be able to do a lit­tle more dam­age con­trol with our mem­ber­ship. But re­mem­ber, he re­fused to com­mu­ni­cate with us. He is the one who came in the pub­lic do­main and stat­ed at the end of March, at the end of the first quar­ter.”

TTUTA has of­fi­cial­ly writ­ten to Min­is­ter Tan­coo ask­ing for a con­crete date for pay­ment; how­ev­er, he has yet to re­spond.