TTUTA President howls: Cheat!

School Supervisors in Trinidad and Tobago are being “cheated” of their rightful earnings and the TT Unified Teachers’ Association (TTUTA) intends to correct this anomaly at all costs. So said Trevor Oliver, president of the national teachers’ body, in Tobago last week. Oliver lamented that school supervisors were taking home less money on retirement than their juniors.  He said educators were therefore shying away from assuming this position, and described the situation as “grave.”

Oliver raised the issue when he addressed the annual Tobago Teachers’ Get Together at the Tobago Hilton. He cited an example: “A Principal 11, which is a secondary school principal, recently retired as a Supervisor 11; he got a gratuity of $175,000. Had he remained as a Principal 11 or secondary principal he would have gotten $340,000, “Oliver argued. “As a matter of fact he gets less than what a secondary vice-principal would get on retiring. 

A Principal 1 gets an average of $275,000 on retirement, and the average teacher, once you complete the 33 1/3 years, somewhere like $185,000”, he ex-plained. “The situation for supervisors, that’s a grave one; because we are not getting people going into the supervisory service, and it is clearly unfair to them!” Oliver declared. He urged that this situation must be seriously addressed by the relevant authorities. “School supervisors are being cheated and we will do everything to ensure that they get their just due,” the TTUTA president assured his Tobago audience.