Belizean Nurses Await Benefits from Government

The Government of Belize has ambitious plans for the health sector over the next few years. At a recent meeting, the cabinet endorsed the Belize Health Sector Strategic Plan 2025 to 2034, which lays out a detailed roadmap for tackling key health system challenges. The cabinet also approved a retention package of allowances for public health nurses to help keep highly skilled nurses in Belize. We spoke with Andrew Baird, President of the K.H.M.H. Workers Union, to get his reaction to the news.

 

Andrew Baird, President, K.H.M.H. Workers Union

“I’m working as a nurse for the past twenty-five years and for the past twenty-five years, uniform allowance for nurses have been at three hundred annually. And if you look at the cost and living to today, three hundred can only buy us our scrubs. And but our uniform includes shoes. So the allotted amongst should be enough to buy shoes. What I know from it maybe raised from three hundred to five hundred also there is what we call a night. Allowance that is given to nurses. Then at this time it is fifty for every twenty night that you work, but you only get to work seven nights per month. So to reach twenty nights, you have to work at least three months or so before you could get that allowance. I believe that they want to raise that allowance to a hundred dollars or something like that, contrary to what the government might offer in our CBA, I believe we are asking for that a lot that night allowance to be monthly rather than based on the amount of nights that one work.  So those are a couple of the allowances that I know that the government may have in their package. May so be that they may have a raise of salary for nurses, I don’t know, or a salary adjustment. But our last adjustment for nurses was in 2012 when we had that adjustment along with the nomenclature name changes throughout the nursing system. But I wait to see a document that the government is pledging to give as a package to nurses, to retain us. The retention of Belizean nurses is long overdue, but not only Belizean nurses, but nurses that works on Belizean a whole. What we have seen over the years is that because of the global demand for nurses, our Belizean nurses and nurses who work in Belize are being offered packages in the US, Canada, and the UK mainly. And those packages have signed bonuses, they find places for them to stay, and then the salary is very attractive. So the government has the match that if we’re going to retain our nurses to stay in Belize.”