Roget to teachers: Take matters into your own hands

Teachers are being urged to take matters into their own hands in their efforts to get a counter-proposal for their collective bargaining agreement from the Chief Personnel Officer (CPO). The call is being made by OWTU president general Ancel Roget.

He was addressing throngs of members of the TT Unified Teachers' Association (TTUTA) at the Brian Lara Promenade, Port of Spain on Tuesday. Roget said it was time for teachers to address inequity themselves and he was not afraid about speaking out against injustice against all public servants despite legislation to restrict seditious speech.

"What you are going to get this afternoon is no seditious statements, you are going to get the facts as they are. So to the police, if you came out for seditious statements to lock up people for talking the truth, lock me up immediately because I will be talking the truth. We have a situation in this country where they (government) want to do anything how they like, and as soon as you stand up to talk they want to lock you away.

"I want to commend all of you this afternoon. Collective bargaining has many different phases. TTUTA has done all they would have supposed to do, that was since 2015, it is because of a lack of response from the Ministry that we are here today."

Describing government's lack of response on TTUTA's proposal as disrespectful, Roget also called on teachers to raise their voices and do what was necessary to be heard.

"It is for the teachers to take matters into your own hands, and if it is the teachers are staying in the classroom, doing their duty and even going beyond their duties and nobody is listening to you, it is time for you to hit the streets in your numbers and nobody vexed or pleased can hold that against you."

Describing non-participating teachers as "parasites" Roget commended TTUTA's membership for their turnout and said their efforts would not be in vain.

For his part, TTUTA president Lynsley Doodhai thanked members for their support and said the lack of feedback from the CPO was unacceptable.

He warned that the association would be prepared to continue its efforts until they got a satisfactory response.

"Many of our teachers have to look for a second source of income to make ends meet, so as the president of TTUTA, I want to say to be prepared to battle even more because today is just the start of a war. We have to get those teachers in our school on board."

Doodhai said next Wednesday TTUTA's general council will hold an emergency session on a post-mortem of the march.