The Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers’ Association (TTUTA) has escalated its call for government transparency, demanding immediate answers over the unexplained disappearance of a $900 million allocation earmarked for teacher backpay in the 2025 national budget. In response to the unresolved delay, the union has instructed its members to adhere strictly to formal job descriptions, and confirmed it is evaluating all legal avenues – including regulated industrial action – that remain permissible under the country’s current state of emergency.
Addressing reporters at TTUTA’s Carlsen Field headquarters during a Wednesday press conference, association industrial relations officer Kerry Broomes outlined the union’s next steps, noting that legal counsel would be engaged to recover the funds the union says are owed to the nation’s educators. Broomes explained that the $900 million sum was first publicly earmarked for teacher salary arrears by former finance minister Colm Imbert when the 2025 fiscal budget was tabled, and questioned why the allocation has vanished without being used for its intended purpose.
He recounted that current Finance Minister Davendradath Tancoo has since acknowledged the $900 million figure was approved, but no payment has materialized. Drawing a colorful analogy to a iconic Sesame Street magic trick character, Broomes joked that “Mumford passed through because the $900 million has disappeared.”
“There is no money to pay teachers, the line item has disappeared, and now all of a sudden they need to quantify. But there is a process that we use when we met with the Chief Personnel Officer to quantify how much backpay will be paid, and we did that, and that’s how we came up with $900 million,” Broomes said. “So how, now, does there need to be new processes before any release can be done? This is nothing less than a falsehood.”
TTUTA president Crystal Ashe amplified the union’s frustration, accusing the government and Ministry of Education of blatant disrespect toward educators and misleading the public about the priority of backpay payments. Ashe pointed to a recent Ministry of Education media statement that claimed teacher backpay was a top government priority, noting the union has received no formal communication to back up this claim.
“Blatant disrespect. What we’re seeing here is just bad, a bundle of what we call lies. Let us stop the lies. Pay the educators the money, find the money. You have it,” Ashe said. He urged the government not to reallocate the earmarked funds to other government projects the state may deem higher priority, stressing that investment in education depends on honoring commitments to the teaching workforce.
The timeline of the delayed payment has shifted repeatedly, according to Ashe. Government initially told the union payments would be completed by June 2025, before pushing the date to January 2026, and then to the end of the first quarter of 2026. Most recently, during a mid-year budget review Monday, Tancoo announced that provisions for outstanding union obligations including teacher and nurse backpay would not be made until the 2027 national budget.
Ashe blasted the repeated delays as “moving the goalposts,” and warned that key school activities could be paused until the funds are released. If teachers are forced to wait until fiscal 2027 to receive what they are owed, Ashe said, voluntary extracurricular activities hosted by teachers, secondary exam grading, graduation ceremony planning, and school registration processes could all be put on hold until 2027.
“TTUTA would not hesitate to take the necessary legal and other actions, noting that any industrial action would have to abide by the law under the current state of emergency,” Ashe reaffirmed.
In addition to the backpay dispute, TTUTA also called attention to previously granted teacher benefits that have been cut, including access to free psychological support through the public service Employee Assistance Programme (EAP).
The backpay dispute stems from a 2025 wage agreement: in April 2025, TTUTA accepted a 5% salary adjustment for the 2020–2023 period put forward by Chief Personnel Officer Dr Daryl Dindial. The deal, which closes 18.2% of the existing wage gap and includes consolidation of the Cost of Living Allowance along with other improved working terms, was supposed to see updated salaries and all backpay issued by the end of January 2026. While the 5% base salary increase was finally reflected in teachers’ bank accounts in March, the full backpay amount remains outstanding, with no official, firm timeline for disbursement.