Teach­ers and nurs­es had mixed re­ac­tions af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo in­di­cat­ed that fi­nan­cial re­lief for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers, who are still await­ing the con­clu­sion of salary ne­go­ti­a­tions and back­pay, will be pro­vid­ed through al­lo­ca­tions in the 2026/2027 bud­get.

How­ev­er, Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Crys­tal Bevin Ashe im­me­di­ate­ly re­ject­ed the pro­posed time­line.

“Un­ac­cept­able. I can give it in one word. Un­ac­cept­able. They (mem­bers) will not ac­cept that, that is ridicu­lous be­cause we had an agree­ment. We had mul­ti­ple dates. Now they’re mov­ing the goal­posts every time,” he said.