PM on BNTU: “For everything dehn wahn strike”

Earlier this week, the Ministry of Education assured the Belize National Teachers Union (BNTU) that all outstanding allowances and increments for teachers will be paid by December twentieth. This announcement came after the BNTU threatened industrial action in January 2025. It looks like the Briceno administration has managed to avoid a crisis. When we spoke with Prime Minister Briceño today, he remarked that the union seems quick to threaten strikes rather than sitting down to negotiate calmly.

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“We’ve always been willing to sit down and meet with the BNTU and I don’t think it’s teachers and if I said teachers then I misspoke.  I was meaning the leadership or some leaders in the BNTU.  For everything dehn wahn strike, dehn wahn strike.  I mean, come on mein, we have more important things to do.  Let’s sit down, we have a government that’s prepared to work with you and listen to you and do as best as we can.  I think this has been the most open government that the BNTU has ever had and one of the best ministers of education that we’ve had under Minister Fonseca, and he gets out of his way to try to deal with them, to meet with them to work with them and try to meet the request and in some instances their demands.  In some of these instances, the cases are merited, I’m not in any way suggesting that it’s not merited, but what is that merited to say if we don’t get it we wah strike?  Come to us and see how we can get it worked out.  And in many instances, it is not us, it is the management that has not been sending all the information, so we see the BNTU or more importantly the teachers as our partners.  We are in this thing together and I appreciate that at the end of the day level heads prevailed.”