MOE, TTUTA discuss salaries and backpay

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) on Thurs­day to dis­cuss sev­er­al is­sues af­fect­ing teach­ers, schools and the wider ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

Ac­cord­ing to a me­dia re­lease, the meet­ing formed part of the Min­istry’s on­go­ing ef­forts to strength­en col­lab­o­ra­tion with key stake­hold­ers and en­sure ed­u­ca­tors’ con­cerns re­main cen­tral to na­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion ini­tia­tives.

Among the is­sues dis­cussed were teacher salary ar­rears and back­pay, the fill­ing of va­can­cies, the pro­cess­ing of leave and oth­er ben­e­fits, im­prov­ing ser­vice ef­fi­cien­cies with­in the Min­istry, school up­grades and in­fra­struc­tur­al im­prove­ment pro­grammes, and strength­en­ing sup­port for Safe­ty and Health Com­mit­tees in schools across the coun­try.

The Min­istry al­so dis­cussed plans to im­prove ad­min­is­tra­tive sys­tems and process­es to en­sure teach­ers re­ceive time­ly re­spons­es to con­cerns and re­quests.

TTUTA was ad­vised that the Min­istry is up­grad­ing its tick­et­ing and re­fer­ral sys­tem to pro­vide teach­ing per­son­nel with a more struc­tured and ef­fi­cient mech­a­nism for sub­mit­ting mat­ters, as well as im­proved track­ing, fol­low-up and res­o­lu­tion sup­port.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Michael R. Dowlath said the Min­istry con­tin­ues to mod­ernise and im­prove op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cies across de­part­ments, adding that sev­er­al ini­tia­tives are al­ready un­der­way to im­prove ser­vice de­liv­ery to ed­u­ca­tors and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

The Min­istry al­so wel­comed TTUTA’s con­tin­ued en­gage­ment on mat­ters re­lat­ed to school safe­ty and stu­dent well­be­ing, recog­nis­ing the im­por­tance of col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach­es in cre­at­ing se­cure and sup­port­ive learn­ing en­vi­ron­ments na­tion­wide.

Both par­ties ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the con­struc­tive na­ture of the dis­cus­sions and agreed on the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing open di­a­logue as ef­forts con­tin­ue to strength­en the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor.