Staff turmoil at VTDI over limbo status

Education Minister Fayval Williams is pleading for patience from the disgruntled faculty at the Vocational Training Development Institute (VTDI) who have vowed to engage in a second day of sickout protests in a bid to twist the Government’s arm in revising salaries, contracts, and employment status.

Educators at the Gordon Town campus of the tertiary arm of Jamaica’s national training agency, the HEART/NSTA Trust, are militant after a botched multi-agency merger that has left them in limbo.

The Senate approved, in December 2019, a bill to merge the functions of HEART/NSTA Trust, National Youth Service (NYS), the Apprenticeship Board and the Jamaican Foundation for Lifelong Learning (JFLL).

But the merger, which was fashioned to centralise the Government’s training resources, has caused many educators to “feel left out” after assessing the benefits of other staff, the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) representative at the VTDI told The Gleaner on Tuesday.

“We have been sidelined for the last couple of years by the HEART/NSTA Trust. We were told we are putting up to the Ministry of Education [Youth and Information] but our employer is still the HEART/NSTA Trust, so what has happened is that many of us have been working in acting positions for over five years,” the union representative, who requested that their name not be published, said.

The nub of the dispute, the JTA rep said, was that VTDI staff have not benefited from salary adjustments applicable to employees in the wider HEART/NSTA Trust. The VDTI staffers have been in administrative purgatory since the transition started because the Ministry of Education, which has putative oversight, has not properly taken charge of the institute.

“We are like stuck in a limbo. Nothing has happened for us ... and it’s only three months’ contract persons are really employed for,” the representative told The Gleaner, adding that discontentment had caused attrition among their ranks.

“We are down to a skeleton staff for full-time, because we can’t attract anybody to the institution right now based on what is happening.”

Citing her relative newness to the ministerial position and saying she was “coming up to speed as quickly” as she could, Williams said that her ministry was working to defuse the simmering row.

“The board was just recently constituted and the plans have been laid out and there are more to add to it but it takes a while to really work through,” she said.

The education minister said that she was aware of the urgency of the concerns, adding that she understood staff anxiety over the tenuousness of their tenure.

“It was just recently that I met with senior management at VDTI and gave them our commitment that we are going to speed up the work that needs to be done there ... . We have a commitment to work with them, and we will do so,” Williams, who took the reins of the ministry in September 2020, said.

However, the JTA staff representative said they were weary with meetings and promises from officials.

“Worst of all, even last week, we saw the HEART Trust sending off something to the other workers that they’re getting retroactive payments, and we don’t even get a good salary,” the liaison said.

Additionally, the rep told The Gleaner that lecturers at the VTDI are required to have a master’s degree and that those at the HEART/NSTA Trust need only a first degree. The representative said that some staff have been acting in positions for up to six years.

A male educator from the institution told The Gleaner that they feel disrespected by the HEART/NSTA Trust.

“HEART employees got on average a 40 per cent increase because of their restructuring and we have gotten nothing. That’s one of our major issues,” the teacher, who requested anonymity, said.

ainsworth.morris@gleanerjm.com