More Than 130 Teachers Have Not Been Paid Their Salaries

The Belize National Teachers Union has raised a red flag, revealing that over one hundred and thirty teachers have not received their salaries. Alarmingly, some have been without pay for as long as five months. What’s causing this dire situation? Union President Nadia Caliz admits that her team is still seeking answers. Today, she held a press conference, accompanied by several affected teachers, to shed light on their plight and demand urgent action.

 

Nadia Caliz, National President, BNTU

“This is the agreement that we had with the Ministry of Education that any teacher that needed to be removed off the system, the managing authority had to write the chief, Chief Gongora, and then she would  address that  up to the last time we checked, and this was like a week before payday, nobody got any notification that they will be removed or anything like that.  And so when we learned on Thursday that a number of our teachers were not paid, we were like taken aback. But why is this so?  Did the management submit what they needed to on all of that? But you see, as a responsible organization, we needed to do our own research, and that’s very important. Our investigation up to this point has revealed that our one hundred and thirty plus, because the numbers are still growing, you can’t find them any at all in the system. So, in order for those teachers to come off the system, somebody had to manually go in and remove them. So, who gave the other? That is our question. When we had an agreement, who disobeyed the agreement that we made with Minister Fonseca because he was in the meeting with us.  Who disagreed? Who did that? Now, when you look at teachers suffering today, let me tell you what happened. And when you all started calling, I said, maybe this is God’s way for us to go. You know, begin to share with the Belizean public what educators are actually going through.  A teacher this morning received a notification that her utilities will be disconnected and that  spiraled from there. She had a breakdown.”