Teachers reject backpay relief delay; nurses welcome timeline clarity

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Teach­ers and nurs­es had mixed re­ac­tions af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo in­di­cat­ed that fi­nan­cial re­lief for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers, who are still await­ing the con­clu­sion of salary ne­go­ti­a­tions and back­pay, will be pro­vid­ed through al­lo­ca­tions in the 2026/2027 bud­get.

How­ev­er, Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Crys­tal Bevin Ashe im­me­di­ate­ly re­ject­ed the pro­posed time­line.

“Un­ac­cept­able. I can give it in one word. Un­ac­cept­able. They (mem­bers) will not ac­cept that, that is ridicu­lous be­cause we had an agree­ment. We had mul­ti­ple dates. Now they’re mov­ing the goal­posts every time,” he said.

“So, you would have moved it from June. You moved it to Jan­u­ary. You moved it to the end of the first quar­ter. Now you have moved it to 2027. When will we have it next? At the end of your term in of­fice? No, that is un­ac­cept­able.”

Ashe said TTUTA will out­line its next steps dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence to­day.

He al­so dis­missed any sug­ges­tion that the union would ac­cept a set­tle­ment in­volv­ing non-cash ben­e­fits.

“That was nev­er dis­cussed. That doesn’t come in­to play with us at all. That is im­pos­si­ble to bring at this point in time. We would have ne­go­ti­at­ed and our agree­ment says that it’s cash. We have noth­ing to do with that (non-cash op­tions),” he added.

In con­trast, T&T Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art wel­comed the fact that Gov­ern­ment had fi­nal­ly pro­vid­ed clar­i­ty on the process and time­line for salary ne­go­ti­a­tions.

“We are hap­py that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment, has fi­nal­ly bro­ken the si­lence on when the nurs­ing per­son­nel will re­ceive a salary in­crease and the mech­a­nism that should take place,” Stu­art said.

He not­ed that for months, the as­so­ci­a­tion had been seek­ing guid­ance from the Gov­ern­ment on how ne­go­ti­a­tions would pro­ceed, who would be re­spon­si­ble and when pay­ments could be ex­pect­ed.

Stu­art said the pro­pos­al will now be tak­en to mem­bers at a spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing on Sat­ur­day for con­sid­er­a­tion.

De­spite wel­com­ing the clar­i­fi­ca­tion, Stu­art main­tained that health­care work­ers should not still be op­er­at­ing un­der 2013 salaries when 2027 ar­rives.

“We would ex­pect the new salaries to take ef­fect with­in 2026 be­cause any­thing less would be un­ac­cept­able for the en­tire health sec­tor,” he added.

He al­so warned that health­care work­ers favour cash pay­ments and would strong­ly op­pose any re­duc­tion in the cash com­po­nent of any even­tu­al set­tle­ment.

Mean­while, de­vel­op­ment econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs said the Mid-Year Re­view raised broad­er ques­tions about Gov­ern­ment fi­nances.

She not­ed that while rev­enue col­lec­tions ex­ceed­ed pro­jec­tions and the fis­cal deficit is ex­pect­ed to nar­row, the Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2.9 bil­lion in sup­ple­men­tary fund­ing de­spite ex­pen­di­ture to April be­ing be­low pro­ject­ed lev­els.

Attzs said ques­tions re­main about whether the ad­di­tion­al spend­ing re­lates to one-off oblig­a­tions, ar­rears and lega­cy com­mit­ments, or re­cur­ring ex­pen­di­tures that could place pres­sure on pub­lic fi­nances in fu­ture years. She said these is­sues are im­por­tant for fis­cal sus­tain­abil­i­ty, fu­ture bor­row­ing re­quire­ments and the coun­try’s long-term eco­nom­ic re­silience.

Attz said she would pro­vide a more com­pre­hen­sive as­sess­ment dur­ing to­day’s Sen­ate de­bate.