UDP Alleges Teachers Still Owed Allowances Despite GOB Claims of Payouts

The opposition United Democratic Party is alleging that the Government of Belize has still not fully resolved the issue of unpaid allowances and increments to teachers. Late last year, teachers mandated the Belize National Teachers Union to prepare for industrial action in January if the issue remained unresolved. However, schools opened across the country this week without any reported issues. The government had reportedly begun issuing those payments in December, but the Leader of the Opposition, Moses “Shyne” Barrow, claims that teachers were still shorted. He noted that the government initially blamed school management for some of the issues with payouts but later entrusted those same management teams to resolve the matter.

Moses “Shyne” Barrow, Leader of the Opposition: “What the government has done is a defiance of logic. This is a government that has blamed the managements for their inability to submit the legitimate and due information, documents, etc. in order to process the teachers’ allowances and increments. Yet this government will turn around and send the monies to the same management that they say have not been competent in ensuring that the processes for getting information, documents, have been done expeditiously and proficiently. So it shows a lack of desire to actually solve this problem because this will continue on. So the government gets to say, well we gave the money to the managements, to managements that they have condemned for incompetence over and repeatedly as the excuse as to why teachers have not gotten their increments, and that will be the same thing.”

Barrow states that the Opposition had made recommendations to the government on how to resolve the issue, but those recommendations were ignored.