Teachers March in POS

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) is prepared for “serious battle” with Gov­ern­ment once there was no moves to improve the salary of teachers.

Speaking on the Brian Lara Promenade after a march through the streets of Port-of-Spain by teachers on Tuesday, TTUTA Pres­i­dent Lyns­ley Doo­d­hai said, “I am sig­nalling to the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer and the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance that TTUTA has tak­en off the prover­bial kids’ gloves and we are pre­pared to en­gage in se­ri­ous bat­tle with the pow­ers that be.”

Thousands of teach­ers stayed away from class­es on Tuesday as they heed­ed the call by TTUTA to en­gage in a peace­ful protest through the streets of Port-of-Spain.

Doo­d­hai said it was un­ac­cept­able that they were still wait­ing on counter-pro­pos­als from the CPO for salary ne­go­ti­a­tions for the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 1, 2014, to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2017.

He said, “We have been hear­ing the cries of our mem­bers. We know you are frus­trat­ed. We know you are an­gry and not pre­pared to take this dis­re­spect any longer.”

Doo­d­hai said teachers were af­fect­ed by the ris­ing cost of liv­ing and were forced to ab­sorb three in­creas­es in the price of fu­el since the last salary ne­go­ti­a­tion in De­cem­ber 2014.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry figures in­di­cat­ed there was a 44.5 percent and 36.7 percent turnout of teach­ers and students respectively in sec­ondary schools.

While in primary schools there was a 37.53 percent turnout of teach­ers and 31.54 percent of stu­dents turned up for class­es.

In the sev­en ed­u­ca­tion­al dis­tricts in Trinidad, there was a to­tal of 76,525 secondary school students and on­ly 28,024 re­port­ed for class­es on Tuesday.

Out of a to­tal of 109,408 pri­ma­ry school stu­dents, on­ly 34,506 stu­dents re­port­ed to school on Tuesday, the ministry said.