Teacher backpay hits bank accounts

Ke­jan Haynes

Teach­ers across Trinidad and To­ba­go have re­ceived their long-await­ed back­pay for salaries cov­er­ing 2020 to 2023, ac­cord­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe.

Ashe told Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day that on­ly a small num­ber of teach­ers had not seen the pay­ments re­flect­ed on the IHIRIS plat­form, which al­lows pub­lic of­fi­cers to view their payslips on­line.

She said those teach­ers con­tact­ed the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, which made arrange­ments for them to re­ceive their pay­ments by vouch­ers.

“But all in all teach­ers over Trinidad and To­ba­go would have re­ceived their long await­ed ar­rears of Salaries for the pe­ri­od 2020-2023,” Ashe said.

The pay­ments fol­low months of un­cer­tain­ty over when teach­ers would re­ceive the out­stand­ing sums.

TTUTA had pre­vi­ous­ly said about $900 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed in the 2025 na­tion­al bud­get to cov­er the teach­ers’ back­pay.

On Sep­tem­ber 12, TTUTA said it had re­ceived re­ports from mem­bers that their back­pay had been re­flect­ed on IHIRIS, but the as­so­ci­a­tion had not re­ceived for­mal con­fir­ma­tion from ei­ther the Min­istry of Fi­nance or Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo had said he would ad­dress the is­sue in Par­lia­ment but nev­er did.