00:00According to the Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers Association, early childhood care and education teachers are under duress by the
00:09Ministry of Education to participate in examination related duties, a duty tutor notes is traditionally voluntarily taken up by primary
00:20and secondary school teachers.
00:22On this particular occasion, the ECC people are being asked to do the monitoring. Now, in the past, up to
00:28last year, the monitoring was done by secondary school teachers who paid a stipend. So these people would have been
00:35given, in addition to the salary that they received normally, because they have no school on their day and they
00:40asked them to come out, they would give them a stipend to work. But the Ministry take a different role
00:45this year. They say they get the ECC people, I guess, to work and they're not paying, they're not getting
00:49any stipend and it would seem as if they're not getting any stipend.
00:52the compensation you there as well. So it's not fair.
00:55Tutor stresses that it remains fully committed to the welfare and success of all students writing SEA 2026. But it
01:05says such tactics being employed by the Ministry of Education must not go unchallenged. Tutor is reissuing its call to
01:14ECC teachers to join the union.
01:16if we get 50 percent of the of them to come on board plus one individual again we will be
01:24the
01:24recognized majority union and so there's approximately four or five hundred of them
01:29and if we get as many of them as we can at least the 50 we will be better representative
01:33at this
01:33point in time they are being coerced they are being told listen you have to work it is mandatory
01:39that you work and if you don't work then you have to apply for your day the tutor president for
01:45the
01:46notes ecc teachers suffer many other injustices one of the main main issues is to get them on what
01:54they call the establishment to get them onto ministry of education as permanent employees
01:58that is their greatest challenge at this point in time they're being intimidated by they have
02:03coordinators that run the ecc centers and one coordinator may be attached to multiple centers
02:08and what happens is that they'll basically tell them don't join twitter now some of them are members
02:13of twitter so twitter will negotiate for them in terms of if they have an issue really like they
02:19want to fire them or somewhere but we cannot negotiate in terms of the terms and conditions of employment
02:23so their wages and the hours of work and all these things we are not allowed to do it tutor
02:28is calling
02:29on the government to bring legislation to regularize ecce teachers renasa cutting tv6 news
