_{Photo: Dian Maheia, CEO for Ministry of Education}

MOE: Teachers should receive delayed payments as scheduled on Friday, December 20

BELIZE CITY, Thurs. Dec. 19, 2024

Chief Executive Officer in the Ministry of Education, Culture, Science and Technology, Dian Maheia confirmed to Amandala this afternoon that teachers for whom there are outstanding payments for allowances and increments should receive their money, as scheduled, by Friday, December 20. When a Facebook news blog posted today that the Government of Belize (GoB) had delivered on its promise to pay the outstanding sums to teachers, the reaction from our educators was swift in calling this a lie. Maheia would subsequently explain to Amandala that GoB transferred what we are told is a sum of over a million dollars to school managements for them to make the disbursements to teachers. Maheia clarified that the disbursements should be completed by Friday which is the date by when the Ministry committed to make the payment.

The payouts are coming outside of the usual payroll cycle processed through the Government’s SmartStream system. However, the Ministry elected to do things this way to speed up payments. That’s because the Ministry was under an ultimatum from the Belize National Teachers’ Union (BNTU) to pay the outstanding moneys by the end of the month or face a teachers protest in January 2025. BNTU National President Nadia Martin-Caliz on Friday, December 6, explained that they learned that even more teachers had not received their latest rural hardship, commuting and responsibility allowances. According to Martin-Caliz, the delay in payments was at 3 months.

In response to the BNTU ultimatum, CEO Maheia wrote a letter to Martin-Caliz on December 9 in which she reported on the Ministry’s commitment to make the payment by December 20, but only after listing all the things that the Briceño Administration has done in benefit of teachers. Those include financial assistance for teachers to further their education; a land clinic for teachers and having teachers become first-time landowners; teachers now being able to access NHI; the resolution to Proposal 22 which remained unresolved for 15 years; and secondary school teachers now accessing allowances previously only available to primary school teachers. In the final paragraph of the letter, Maheia stated, “The work to ensure that those teachers who are due increments and allowances has not faltered.”

The issue of the increments and allowances was raised on adjournment as a matter of National Importance by the Leader of the Opposition, Hon. Moses “Shyne” Barrow at the last House meeting for the calendar year on Friday, December 13. He chastised the Briceño Administration that while “teachers continue to suffer from a lack of financial support … I have seen this Prime Minister come into this House and pass supplementary [appropriations] for $100 million, pass payouts for $70 million to special interests, but it has taken 4 years and a threat of industrial action for a letter to be written of promises – [for] which I will not hold my breath.” Barrow also remarked that we are in the digital age and the Government should have long acquired requisite software to prevent the recurrence of these issues.

Responding to Barrow, Deputy Prime Minister Cordel Hyde remarked, “The Minister [of Education] told the nation that this is a problem that we inherited, but we are not going to cry about it, we are going to solve the problem.” During a break in the meeting, Prime Minister John Briceño told the media, “I think this has been the most open government the BNTU has ever had, and one of the best ministers of education that we’ve had; and he goes out of his way to try to deal with them, to meet with them, to work with them, and try to meet their requests, and in some instances their demands. In some of these instances, the cases are merited; but what is not merited is to say, ‘oh, if we don’t get it we will strike.’ Come to us to.. and see how we can get it worked out. And in many instances, it’s not us; it’s the managements that have not been sending all the information.” Briceño affirmed that they see the teachers as their partners.