Teachers’ backpay hits bank accounts

Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

ke­[email protected]

The na­tion’s teach­ers, for the most part, 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 yes­ter­day 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.

He 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.

How­ev­er, teach­ers in To­ba­go are still wait­ing for their salary ar­rears.

TTUTA To­ba­go of­fi­cer De­on Ro­driguez said the as­so­ci­a­tion met with the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Skills and In­no­va­tion on Sep­tem­ber 15 and was told that all teach­ers in To­ba­go should re­ceive their ar­rears by the end of Sep­tem­ber.

Ro­driguez said To­ba­go teach­ers had al­ready re­ceived their Sep­tem­ber salaries and had al­so re­ceived the $600 salary al­lowance ne­go­ti­at­ed by TTUTA.

He said the process for pay­ing the ar­rears in To­ba­go dif­fers from Trinidad be­cause the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly us­es a man­u­al sys­tem for pro­cess­ing salaries.

“Right, so what hap­pens in To­ba­go is, un­for­tu­nate­ly, THA runs a man­u­al sys­tem, un­like our coun­ter­parts in Trinidad, where salaries and so on are done via an elec­tron­ic com­put­erised sys­tem us­ing tech­nol­o­gy. To­ba­go us­es a man­u­al sys­tem.”

Ro­driguez said the man­u­al process had in­volved cal­cu­la­tions and au­dits, with the lat­est in­for­ma­tion he re­ceived be­ing that the au­dits were be­ing com­plet­ed last week.

“Notwith­stand­ing that, and the time that this mon­ey was owed to us, that is not an ex­cuse,” he said.

Ro­driguez said TTUTA would seek fur­ther dis­cus­sions with the THA if the ar­rears were not paid by the end of Sep­tem­ber.

“Not yet, but if it comes to the end of Sep­tem­ber and our teach­ers in To­ba­go don’t re­ceive their salary ar­rears, then we’re go­ing to have a dif­fer­ent con­ver­sa­tion.”

The pay­ments in Trinidad 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.