P.S.U Prez Says Fire Fighters Want Better Pay, Resources

On Friday, Belize City firefighters launched a go-slow protest over changes to their work schedule, which they say impacts their salaries. They’re also unhappy with their working conditions and the limited resources they must work with. This protest comes on the heels of recent corruption allegations involving some top officials. Today, some firefighters met with Dean Flowers, President of the Public Service Union. Afterward, Flowers had a meeting with Kennedy Carillo, the C.E.O. in the Ministry of Disaster Risk Management, and other ministry representatives. Flowers shared the details of their discussions with us.

 

Dean Flowers, President, Public Service Union

“ They are primarily administrative matters. I think there is a great need for the ministry. to really examine the quality of leadership that currently exists within the Fire Department. I think that a lot of the problems that the firefighters ventilated this morning stem from poor leadership, poor administrative leadership. To get into a few of the matters that were discussed. I know one of the pressing matters that was aired on the news Last week was the issue of the cutting of overtime. And I want to state that whilst, yes, they were disgruntled and are disgruntled with the manner in which the new policy was effected, I want to state that it is not as simple as they want to be paid overtime. The issue here is that these officers are severely underpaid and underappreciated. And so, the matter of compensation for the work that they’re doing, the additional services that they’re providing in terms of the ambulance services, um, there were arrangements, internal arrangements made in terms of how that additional work would be compensated and so this new policy would have affected that arrangement and thus they felt that they would have been compensated – they’re not properly compensated for the work that they do. But in addition to that, what was highlighted today is that there are several allowances that several firefighters are being denied. We don’t know why there are officers who are receiving a danger allowance. Some are receiving a hazardous allowance. Others are receiving no allowance. We went through the compendium today and we identified at least five allowances that we believe are due to firefighters. And so that is one of the matters that we will be addressing with the Ministry of Public Service as well as this ministry here.”