Belize Unions give government ultimatum

Public sector trade unions have given the Belize government until April to lift the current freeze on increments to public servants.

Increments are usually between three to five percent of salaries and paid at various times of the year for different workers. The issue was among matters discussed in December last year between Prime Minister John Briceño and a joint trade union delegation.

President of the Public Service Union (PSU), Dean Flowers, speaking at a news conference on Tuesday, told reporters that the unions had delayed informing the public about the outcome of the deliberations last December in order to inform their members first.

He said now that has been done, the unions are demanding that their increments be reinstated by April 1.

In August last year, the Ministry of Finance issued a circular making it  clear that government will not be engaged in new hiring, creating posts or filling vacant ones, and approving salary advances and new allowances.

Prime Minister Briceño had also indicated then that the freeze on increments for public officers and teachers cannot be lifted simultaneously with the resumption of their full pay that took effect in July last year.

Flowers told reporters that as it relates to the increments of public sector workers, Prime Minister Briceño had informed the joint unions that not only was he not prepared to restore increments in the upcoming fiscal year but that he was also not prepared to restore public officers on the point where they ought to be when his government decides when to resume the payments of increments.

“Now, you will hear me use the word restore and not resume, because the restoration or resumption of increments is not guaranteed in 2024. Our position to the government remains, increments must be restored by April 1, 2023.

“There is absolutely no reason for the government to continue punishing public officers by withholding their increments. When the financial secretary came to us he was clear that the government would have yielded approximately DZS$17 million (One Belize dollar=US$0.49 cents) in savings,” Flowers said.

He told reporters that for the past three years that would have resulted in BDZ$51 million in savings. “Lo and behold if it is that the government really needed to freeze increments then how in the world that his administration can justify that in one year, a part from passing the budget they went back to the House (Of Assembly) for BDZ$240 million in supplemental.

CMC/