Struck by the plight of educators diagnosed with various critical illnesses who are struggling to cover medical bills, newly installed Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) President Mark Malabver says the union is dogged in its push to have a viable Critical Illness Trust Fund for the membership.

Speaking with the Jamaica Observer on Friday, ahead of Sunday’s wine and cheese fund-raiser, Malabver said the hope is to raise $3 million this year from the event which will be hosted at Shortwood Teachers’ College in St Andrew beginning at 6:00 pm.

“We are pushing hard to raise funds, we have a system in place internally where a portion of funds go over every year into that fund because we want to get to a particular point where we can start making payouts to our members. We have raised some funds already and these were already invested,” Malabver said, noting that the ultimate goal is to pool upwards of $1 billion in time to come.

In the meantime, he assured that no efforts are spared to ensure fairness and integrity.

“The fund has a board and so applications for financial support for whatever critical illness they may be facing, whether it is cancer or some sort of operation, it goes to that board; the board will deliberate and then seek to provide funding or support based on the availability of funds,” Malabver outlined.

The JTA president, in the meantime, said the number of educators falling ill and requiring surgery is striking.

“I don’t have that ballpark figure just now, but for us it is very significant. I can’t say off the top of my head what that number is, but even since I have been president — I took on the role since August — at least four requests for assistance have come across my desk, so it tells you. And in all honesty we are not able to assist with all of these, we just have to look at the ones that we believe are the most critical ones and do a needs analysis and see how best we can assist,” he told the
Observer.

Malabver said he was presently contemplating the cry for help from one veteran high school educator who “is going blind” and requires surgery running “in the millions [of dollars]” if her vision is to remain.

“To be honest with you, these are the challenges a lot of our teachers face; working in a stressful environment which no doubt contributes to these critical illnesses and we just have to see how best we can help,” he said.

Malabver said while the undertaking “is not a mainstream JTA activity” the union could not stand by and do nothing.

“The JTA continues to do what it can to support our teachers in terms of whatever critical illness they might have… we recognise that our members have needs from time to time and we deem it our duty and responsibility to assist in whatever way we can. The organisation wants to be in a position where it can truly help our members to recover and get on with life,” he said.

President of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica Metry Seaga is the patron for the event which attracts a $15,000 per person contribution.

The fund was officially launched in 2019 by former JTA President Dr Garth Anderson.