Finance Minister: Teachers’ backpay won’t be completed by month-end

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo says the pay­ment of back­pay owed to teach­ers will not be com­plet­ed by the end of this month, even as re­vised salaries have al­ready be­gun to reach ed­u­ca­tors.

His com­ments come amid re­newed con­cern from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA), which re­cent­ly con­firmed that teach­ers are ex­pect­ed to re­ceive up­dat­ed salaries by month-end but not­ed there was no clear in­di­ca­tion that ar­rears would be paid at the same time.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia via What­sApp yes­ter­day, Tan­coo said TTUTA it­self had ac­knowl­edged that new salaries were al­ready be­ing paid, but ex­plained that the process of cal­cu­lat­ing ar­rears re­mains on­go­ing with­in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

“The pro­cess­ing of cal­cu­la­tions are still on­go­ing at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and will not be com­plet­ed be­fore the end of the month,” he said.

TTUTA, un­der its cur­rent lead­er­ship, has been press­ing for the full im­ple­men­ta­tion of a five per cent salary in­crease for the 2020-2023 pe­ri­od.

The agree­ment was reached just days be­fore the April 28 gen­er­al elec­tion be­tween the union, then led by for­mer pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin and the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO).

In re­cent weeks, TTUTA’s pres­i­dent, Crys­tal Ashe, urged the Gov­ern­ment to ex­pe­dite the process, call­ing for ad­di­tion­al re­sources to en­sure teach­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly in To­ba­go, re­ceive both their salaries and back­pay with­out fur­ther de­lay.

“We are ask­ing the Min­istry of Fi­nance, do what you need to do… Let our teach­ers in To­ba­go re­ceive their mon­ey in a time­ly man­ner. Let them re­ceive it now,” Ashe said.

Tan­coo told Guardian Me­dia that he will look in­to the claims about the de­layed pay­ments to To­ba­go teach­ers made by Ashe.

“I will have to con­firm and find out why,” he said.

How­ev­er, Ashe yes­ter­day pushed back on the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion, say­ing the union has not re­ceived any di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion on when ar­rears will be paid.

“TTUTA has ab­solute­ly no in­for­ma­tion on the pay­ment of ar­rears to ed­u­ca­tors. What TTUTA ar­tic­u­lat­ed is that mem­bers have in­formed us that their March payslip de­picts an ad­just­ed salary. It must be not­ed that they have not yet been ac­tu­al­ly paid, though what the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion plat­form de­picts usu­al­ly is what will be paid at the end of the month,” Ashe said.

He added that as of yes­ter­day, the union was still in the dark re­gard­ing time­lines.

“TTUTA has not re­ceived any com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance – clear dates re­lat­ed to these pay­ments,” he stat­ed.

Ashe al­so raised con­cerns about out­stand­ing pay­ments to a cat­e­go­ry of ed­u­ca­tors.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, those mem­bers of the Third Sched­ule that were un­der the PSA dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2014–2019 have not yet re­ceived their ‘ad­vance of ar­rears’ as mem­bers of the PSA would have re­ceived in De­cem­ber 2025.”

Call­ing for im­proved en­gage­ment, Ashe urged the Fi­nance Min­is­ter to deal di­rect­ly with the union.

“TTUTA is ask­ing the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to com­mu­ni­cate with TTUTA di­rect­ly as op­posed to do­ing so through the me­dia. Ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion is the key.”

Tan­coo fur­ther sug­gest­ed that union of­fi­cials were aware of the time­line for ar­rears and re­it­er­at­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to ho­n­our­ing its oblig­a­tions.

“I ap­pre­ci­ate their need to con­vince mem­bers that they have start­ed seek­ing their in­ter­ests. This Gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to meet­ing its oblig­a­tions. I am cer­tain that teach­ers know that their ar­rears are go­ing to be paid,” he said, while ac­knowl­edg­ing the coun­try’s “se­vere­ly chal­lenged po­si­tion.”

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter al­so took aim at the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion, ac­cus­ing it of fi­nal­is­ing agree­ments with­out putting sys­tems in place to im­ple­ment them.

“The same is true for all unions which have reached set­tle­ments with the CPO or which are cur­rent­ly ne­go­ti­at­ing in good faith. I be­lieve that TTUTA and oth­er Unions are, in fact, aware that the PNM guid­ed some unions in­to set­tle­ments and put noth­ing in place to ac­tu­al­ly im­ple­ment the hur­ried set­tle­ments. It is ob­vi­ous too that the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion was ful­ly aware of this from their ut­ter­ances since then.”

Ac­cord­ing to Tan­coo, the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment, led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, is work­ing to re­build re­la­tions among work­ers, busi­ness­es and the state.

“I be­lieve unions know that. We con­tin­ue to make progress to un­do the PNM decade of de­struc­tion and to build a bet­ter busi­ness/work­er/gov­ern­ment re­la­tion­ship the coun­try des­per­ate­ly needs.”

He added that progress is be­ing made to ful­fil agree­ments not on­ly for teach­ers but for all unions that have set­tled or are ne­go­ti­at­ing with the CPO.