TTUTA president ‘calls off’ student exams

WITH Labour Day celebrations mere days away, thousands of teachers laboured and braved inclement weather to engage in a slow, funeral march along the streets of San Fernando to call attention to the breakdown in their salary negotiations. Leader of the Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA) Trevor Oliver, who led the march, warned that national exams for students would be shut down and students can expect an early start to their long summer vacation, unless salary negotiations between the Chief Personnel Officer (CPO) and TTUTA started in earnest today. Oliver also “called off” the national tests saying, “if the Ministry is concerned about any exams, they must do the right thing and provide adequate compensation packages for the nation’s 10,000 plus teachers.”

Oliver who earlier led the banner-bearing, placard-waving teachers in a slow march through the streets, said the “boots of economic servitude and oppression are now on our backs.” And quoting from the Holy Bible, the defiant TTUTA president declared that, just as the time of reaping and sowing were cyclic in nature, the “time to refrain from teaching” had arrived. “There is a time to reap and a time to sow...a time to rejoice and a time to resist from rejoicing. A time to play and a time to desist from playing. I say to you, there is a time to teach and a time to refrain from teaching,” Oliver said, adding that today as well as next Tuesday, were “days to refrain.” He warned against, “any nonsense,” being placed on the bargaining table saying the, “days of rest and reflection,” may stretch beyond next week.

“We cannot guarantee and I say it to the national population, we cannot guarantee what will happen Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of next week. We do not know, because if any nonsense is put on that table tomorrow, Hell will come,” Oliver declared. “If dotishness is put on that table, be on the alert. On very short notice, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and probably going right to the end of term — we down. We going right down.” And with teachers now almost cheering his every word, Oliver declared that  next week’s national tests would not be administered by the dissatisfied teachers. “Tell the Ministry to forget that because we not doing any national tests.Therefore with the powers invested in me by you, I call off the national tests,” he declared.

Oliver also responded to a number of critics who observed that the teachers’ actions were having a negative impact on the nation’s schoolchildren. “When our experienced and expert teachers have to leave these shores for greener pastures as the continued haemorrhaging of the system continues, where there are shortages in Math and English teachers sometimes for a year or 18 months, that is suffering for our children,” he said.

“If this nation wants this thing to stop, tell the Prime Minister to fix up the teachers,” he declared. He also warned against the “willy nilly” tampering of teachers’ leave entitlement by the Education Ministry’s permanent secretary saying, “Everyone is entitled to their leave.” As far as I know, Trinidad and Tobago is still a democracy and the permanent secretary is on dangerous grounds when she tries to interfere with people’s leave entitlement, Oliver told the crowd.