TTUTA and JTUM team up

The protest action, held yesterday morning outside the Minister of Education on St Vincent Street, Port-of-Spain, also included JTUM members, members of the newly formed Early Childhood Care Workers Union, and parents of the Mamoral Early Childhood Centre.

They all held placards supporting different causes.

Minister in the Ministry of Education, Dr Lovell Francis, who stood on the sidelines, was largely ignored by the protestors.

As the protestors chanted, “Garcia, hiding from workers,” Francis said the minister was at the time attending a meeting of the Cabinet’s Finance and General Purposes Committee.

Responding to the call for disciplinary action to be taken against the school official, Francis reiterated, the ministry does not discipline teachers as that is a function of the Teaching Service Commission.

“You cannot arbitrarily determine that someone is guilty of something.

There has to be a thorough investigation. That investigation was partially done by a school supervisor and is still ongoing. That issue has not come to rest yet,” he said.

TTUTA President Lynsley Doodhai told the media that the union has been very vocal in the call to remove the senior teacher to facilitate a proper and independent investigation into concerns that many of its members have in terms of governance and leadership at the school.

In the same way that Education Minister Anthony Garcia could announce a week after teachers picketed outside the school on March 6, during their lunch break, that recommendations were going to be made to the TSC to take disciplinary action against teachers, the ministry can recommend to the TSC that action be taken against the school official.

“There is evidence that the school official has transgressed the code of conduct under which teachers are governed,” he said.

Teachers at the school, he said, feel victimised, abused and intimidated because of the actions of the school official and the working environment was toxic.

“The quality of work at the school is affected.

We have a member of staff who has been unable to attend school since the beginning of the year because of stress related diseases,” he said.

In reaction to Garcia’s statement that the teachers who protested were setting a poor example to the students, Doodhai said, “as far as we are concerned, he is being hypocritical and disingenuous in his remarks.” As a former TTUTA president, he said, Garcia would have led many picketing exercises.

“We reject his statement outright that teachers are setting a bad example.

In fact his statement has incensed the entire trade union movement,” he said.

He said he had to be careful about what he says, “because we have a lawsuit from an official of the school.” Francis said that he was not aware of any lawsuit being taken by a SMSS school official.

Told that it was being said that the protest was due to the fact that he has a relative working at the school, Doodhai acknowledged that he has a relative working at the school and has relatives working at many schools because he comes from a family of educators.

The protest, he said, was not a one-man call but an action taken by TTUTA’s general council.