Prime Minister Responds to Teachers’ Planned Protest, Calls for Better Dialogue

And while the teachers are preparing to demonstrate, Prime Minister John Briceno says he wishes the leadership of the BNTU would explain the situation adequately to its membership. Briceno says that the teachers are within their rights to demonstrate but he is disappointed that things have gotten here, in light of all that his government has done for teachers. He noted that the issue of increments and allowances predates his administration, but it’s one that will be resolved under his leadership.

John Briceño, Prime Minister of Belize: “It’s a free country and if the BNTU feels the need to want to do a demonstration It is within their right but secondly I think it’s a bit disappointing because here is a government that has been working with them. We have done so many things to try to help the teachers. For instance, for years and years and years and years this problem which high school that teachers would not get their full retirement benefits. It took a PUP government that came on board to say okay, we see that as something that’s not being fair to these teachers, that the religious organizations or groups or managements were to put up 30% of their retirement but they weren’t doing it. We felt that it was unfair to teachers who work pretty much all their adult life to educate our children. So we did it. As Minister Fonseca explained this issue about some teachers not being paid their increments and so forth and allowances a lot of it has to do that the managements have been taking long in sending the right information to the Ministry of Education. The minister pointed out also that this is a problem that we inherited and what’s important for Belizeans to understand and even for teachers to understand is that we have been clearing up a backlog as far as 2018 before our government and now we’re up to 2023 coming into 2024. So whilst I do understand and I respect the teachers frustration and saying that they need to be paid and we want to pay them I wish they would be at least some members within the leadership of the BNTU would I think should be more open and be able to explain more to the teachers what is being done. We want to pay the teachers and we will pay them.”

Briceno says that the delays in the payouts are for various reasons but should not be interpreted as an unwillingness on the part of his administration to give teachers their due. We’ll be closely following this story.