BNTU Plans Three-Phase Protest for Teachers’ Increments

Friday’s B.N.T.U. demonstration is part of a three-phase protest plan. The action starts with a public demonstration, followed by a two-day national shutdown, and could escalate to a full strike if necessary. The union is demanding swift action from the government to provide teachers with their overdue increments. B.N.T.U. President Nadia Caliz highlighted that while the increments have been unfrozen, the rollout has been slow and the mechanisms in place are flawed.

 

Nadia Caliz, President, Belize National Teacher’s Union

“They’re slow rollout. There’s problem at the management level. Because some of my teachers don’t even have a fine, they can’t find these certificates, so they have to go back and get them done Sometimes. I believe that there is some game being played too, because schools can show where they submitted everything electronically, but yet you have the ministry asking back for these things. So you begin to question from the union standpoint. They need to take this matter very serious. Some are saying, oh, that is twenty people or forty persons. It doesn’t matter how many persons I know. It’s more than that for, I know it’s in a hundred still that I can put my head on the block for, but you need to take it seriously. It needs to be treated with urgency. And like I said, to one media house, not because it’s far less than the entire working population, means you will treat these people like that. Who will pay their financial obligations, who will pay the banks, who will pay the credit unions, who will pay a BEL, who will pay WASA. So while you are there receiving your check and you are caught up in the numbers, they’re suffering. And so we, we can’t take that anymore because we have listened to some of the comments. No, they need to address it. They need to treat their employees, and I’m talking to both management and government. In this case, you need to treat your workers with a level of respect and you need to handle this matter with urgency and government also need to put in place some kind of mechanism to address the fact that teachers are not being paid that they can get something before the next ending of the month. Asking people to wait for another month or two months, or three months is unfair. And so we are now looking at pursuing the legal route because the council voted for that already. And we, I did venture into getting that done. We hold off, but with more and more teachers coming at you, that’s not something we, that we can continue to take lightly.”