Author: Brianna Bennett

It has been less than a week since Santiago Ciau Junior was laid to rest following a long battle with a debilitating bone condition. As previously reported, Ciau retired in March 2023 due to medical unfitness resulting from a workplace injury in 2009. After numerous doctor visits, he was diagnosed with avascular necrosis, which caused him to miss work for extended periods. Ciau reportedly faced repeated denials for invalidity benefits from the Social Security Board (S.S.B.). Despite his appeals, he said he received a late notification, which prevented him from making a timely second appeal. On Thursday, the Social Security Board issued a statement clarifying “key facts” in Ciau’s case. Today, News Five spoke with Santiago Ciau Senior, who refuted the line of events that the press release stated.

 

Santiago Ciau Sr., Father

“On the 30th of November, my son told me, “Dad, I just got a call from social,” that was in the afternoon. It was a Thursday. It was in the afternoon. Almost 3 o’clock. He said they got a letter for me at the front desk in Social Security. I tell him, man, Let’s go pick it up tomorrow morning, which was the 1st of December, a Friday. And I took him. And when he receives a letter, and we open the letter, this is the letter that we receive. See the date. How in the world can we appeal when they give us this letter? They call him five days after the expiration date. Yes, according to the letter. But we did not receive this. We should have received this letter so that we could have appealed before the 25th of November. We received this letter; the call came the 30th, and when we picked up this letter on the 1st of December, which was a Friday, that is when we realised that it was the result of the appeal that was addressed to the attorney. How can we appeal? and then that get my son depressed and frustrated. He said, “But how can I appear when they don’t expire?”

For the past few weeks we have been reporting on election fraud allegations made by U.D.P. standard bearer for Cayo North, Omar Figueroa. He claims that more than a hundred voter registrations during the transfer period are fraudulent, pointing to unspecified and overcrowded home addresses as evidence. Figueroa, accompanied by the magistrate, visited several of these addresses for further investigation. The magistrate then decided to forward the case to the High Court, leaving no determination yet. So for now, all one hundred and one voter transfers will remain in their original constituencies until a final decision is reached. The transfers were from several constituencies across the country, including Belize Rural Central, which is represented by Dolores Balderamos-Garcia. Today, reporters asked her if she was concerned.

 

Dolores Balderamos, Belize Rural Central Representative

“I will not comment on the politics of it, but I will remind you that I am the duly elected representative, but I am also the standard bearer for the next election. Having gone through an endorsement convention in July. I will give no further comment. You go and look at the numbers and see the amount of work that has been done in Belize Rural Central for the transfers during the transfer period and the ongoing registration of 18 year-olds and new voters. You go and look it up. “

The Auditor General position has been vacant for six weeks, and today the government recommended Deputy Auditor General Maria Rodriquez to temporarily fill the role for the next four months. Prime Minister Briceño stated that during this time, the government will search for a qualified candidate to permanently take over the post. He also mentioned that G.O.B. is collaborating with the I.M.F. to strengthen the office’s functions.

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“As we are all aware the auditor general’s previous one was already retired, and we had to bring her back in and her time had come to an end and so we need to bring her back to point another one. As the resolution states, the governor general acting with recommendation from both houses, we need both houses to be able to help us with this one. I want to be clear that the notice went out for a qualified person to fill the post, and we hope that this process will be completed by the end of the year. I know a lot of people get excited about it, but we are trying to do our very best to get a qualified person. Even within the office of the auditor general there are challenges as to who best can fit this post. So, we believe the best way to do that is to advertise it and the persons in the office can apply for that post. It is going to be an open and transparent post. We have no hidden agenda. We have agreed and this is one area we have to strengthen. We are working with the IMF to find ways how we can strengthen the office of the auditor general and also to bring up all our accounts up to date.”

The opposition expressed concern over the fact that the Office of the Auditor General has not released an audit report in nearly a decade. Opposition Leader Moses “Shyne” Barrow claims the government is deliberately undermining the office’s efforts to avoid financial transparency and oversight. Here’s his take on the matter.

 

Moses “Shyne” Barrow, Leader of the Opposition

“The office of the auditor general is the supreme audit institution of Belize that plays a crucial role in the holding of the government accountable when it comes to the stewardship of our public funds. It is difficult to accept the prime minister’s presentation that this is not deliberate. It has been four years, prime minister lamented back in 2021 when Dorothy Bradley retired, and he was forced to reappoint her in 2022. Where is the plan for succession and you may be instinctively tempted to say well it is incompetence. I would not say so. I would say it is deliberate. If you have a dysfunctional office of the auditor general, guess what happens, there is no accountability. There is no accountability for a government that is spending billions and billions of dollars. There is no transparency and good governance. I am an outsider. I am not a career politician. You asked where was I when prime minister Barrow was here. I was selling million and millions of records little man. Tek it easy chihuahua. I retract that madam speaker.”

In observance of Caribbean Statistics Day, the Statistical Institute of Belize (S.I.B.) hosted its Second Annual Data Users Conference in Belize City today. The event featured presentations from various data-driven organisations, highlighting the SIB’s work and how statistics can be utilised to enhance their efforts. While statistics hold great potential, the conference also addressed both the strengths and weaknesses within the system. News Five’s Marion Ali attended the event and filed this report.

 

Marion Ali, Reporting

Today, agencies and organisations that deal with data collection and dissemination had representation at a forum organised by the Statistical Institute of Belize. The event had three objectives: to raise awareness of Belize’s national statistical system, to demonstrate how data can be used for policy and research purposes, and to look at the future of data in Belize and data innovations for production, use, and dissemination of data.

 

Diana Trejo, Director General, S.I.B.

“A lot of work has been done to enhance the quality, the type of statistics, the range of statistics that we do, timeliness, and our modes of dissemination; those things are some definite strengths.”

 

Diana Trejo is SIB’s Director General. She said that focus has been placed on enhancing the service, but there is still room for improvement in others.

 

Diana Trejo

“Obviously there are a lot of data gaps that we recognise, and these are in some very key areas, things like climate change, data on vulnerable populations, persons with disabilities, and LGBTQ persons. We know that there are some definite data gaps that need to be addressed; even with respect to our ability to produce the SDG indicators, we are still not even halfway there with those indicators. We don’t have a formal mechanism for coordinating ourselves, and so because of this, we haven’t yet been able to establish things like national standards for statistics, national classifications, and concepts that we all adopt. But I will say though that these weaknesses are the things that we have taken into account as we are developing our new national strategy.”

 

Trejo projected that the system will have been improved over the next five years. A major part of that improvement necessitates the assistance of the UN. Since several of its agencies, funds, and programs rely on Belize’s statistics, particularly from the population census, it is willing to help in the process. Hero Balani is the Head of Office of the UN Resident Coordinator in Belize.

 

Hero Balani, Head of Office, UNRCO

“We’re looking at some of the future of data with some of the UN agencies, the use of artificial intelligence—big data in Belize—and how data users can really expand, but interestingly, we have signed, as you know, in March this year, a new project with the Statistical Institute of Belize. It’s called Enabling of the Statistical System in Belize, and it is being implemented by five UN agencies, including UNDP, UNICEF, FAO, WFP, and UNFPA. So this is really a proud achievement because what we’re doing is really bringing together the technical expertise from all of these agencies to support the building up of the national data ecosystem for the future.”

 

Currently Belize does not have legislation for a national statistical system; hence, a part of the project is to look at the legal regulatory framework. Balani says that a part of the UN’s technical assistance to the SIB is to also look at that issue. Marion Ali for News Five.

The population census that the Statistical Institute of Belize released earlier this year indicated far lower numbers than what was actually projected before the data collection event took place. Today Diana Trejo explained what could be the factors that have affected the actual numbers.

 

Diana Trejo, Director General, S.I.B.

“With respect to the population statistics, I know that this is a particularly touchy one because our previous estimates were much higher than where the census, um, showed us to be in actuality, but we do believe that what we are publishing now is much improved from what was estimated prior. Um, it is well in line with what we see in terms of, um, data from the Ministry of Education in terms of their intake and, and, um, cohort sizes. Year over year, the Ministry of Education has seen that. Um, the intake is, is shrinking, or at least the growth in their intake is slowing down. It also corresponds with what we see from the Ministry of Health. I believe just earlier this week there was a report that the number of births for last year was the lowest ever recorded. This is right in line with what we are seeing with the slowdown in terms of population growth. One of the things that we definitely saw was a reduction in the size of our migrant, not migrant population or foreign-born population. Um, and I do think it’s very possible that a part of this can be because when the pandemic struck, um, persons left the country, persons who are here, perhaps working, left the country and, you know, they didn’t return subsequently or they didn’t return by the time we did the census.”

 

Reporter

“Can you talk about the fact that the towns and villages will soon get new borders? Um, how, how does that affect the statistics?”

 

Diana Trejo

“We recently published our village or community level population counts from the centers. And the reason why this came out so far after the main findings, um, was precisely because we wanted to establish or agree upon a set of working boundaries for each of these communities um, with the relevant government agencies so that when we allocate households to a particular boundary, um, we are all speaking about the same community.” 

 

While Belize’s unemployment rate remains officially reported at three percent or less, the real number of unemployed individuals is significantly higher. Today, Diana Trejo, Director General of the Statistical Institute of Belize, explained that this low figure stems from the fact that many people who are not working are not actively seeking employment.

 

Diana Trejo, Director General, S.I.B.

“The labor market is tight at this time and that is reflected in our data. We had an all-time low of two point eight percent unemployment last year, I believe it was and that was pretty much reflected in the experiences of employers. Employers are having a hard time recruiting enough people to fill the vacancies that they have. The agricultural sector was suffering from a shortage of labor and  just generally, this goes along with what we are seeing in our data. Now, one important thing to note is that not everyone who can be a part of the labor force is actually in the labor force. Only about fifty-five percent of persons who are of that working age of fourteen and above actually participate in the labor force. So we have a very large chunk of our population, working age population, who are not at all participating in the labor force. At one point, we had a sizable number of persons who we classified as the potential labor force because they’re not working, they’re available, but they’re not looking.”

The Briceño Administration is borrowing twenty million U.S. dollars from the Caribbean Development Bank for the Development Finance Corporation (DFC). According to Prime Minister John Briceño, the new line of credit will support DFC’s ongoing lending program. The prime minister broke down the figure during today’s Sitting of the House of Representatives in Belmopan. He explained how the twenty million U.S. dollars will be utilised, while noting that the institution has loaned over a hundred and twenty million dollars over the last four years.

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“This motion is to seek this honorable house to approve the government guarantee of U.S. twenty million dollars. This new line of credit is to support the DFC’s ongoing lending program. This is the breakdown that we want to do. For the productive sector, for small businesses we want to set aside eighteen million Belize dollars, for residential mortgages nine million dollars, for education nine million dollars for renewable energy and energy efficiency, four million dollars. I am sure the minister of education will be the first to tell you that there is a tremendous need there is for education assistance to our young people. We have a lot of very intelligent students and in some instances, it is impossible for them to make it just from their own resources. As a government we have been providing millions of dollars.”