Photo: Jorge Mejia, Acting National President, BNTU
BELIZE CITY, Mon. Dec. 4, 2023
On Friday, December 1, during almost three hours, the Minister of Education, Hon. Francis Fonseca, members of his Education Management Team, school managers and the Council of Management of the Belize National Teachers’ Union (BNTU) painstakingly went through five issues of concern raised by the Union. The BNTU had summoned the officials to the meeting at the ITVET compound in Belize City on Tuesday, November 28, and on Friday, Minister Fonseca told Amandala that he attended personally because he wanted to “demonstrate very clearly to the Union that, once again, we are absolutely committed to working very closely with the Belize National Teachers’ Union. We recognize them as an important partner in education. We have to work together. One can’t function without the other. They represent our teachers who are a valued member of our community.”
Fonseca described it as a productive, positive and respectful meeting, and informed that they took along officials from the Treasury Department and their own finance staff, given that most of the issues have to do with finance. Fonseca says they agreed on specific timelines to resolve the issues.
As it relates to the matter of some teachers not having received their salaries since the start of the school year in September, Fonseca says the Union presented data from a survey which showed a small number of affected teachers. In many cases, he said, it was new teachers “who had come on and their paperwork was not properly finalized, or they had been transferred from one management to the other and the paperwork had not followed them. In many cases, unfortunately, it’s a case of managing authorities not having the proper documentation in place, or not having provided that documentation to the Ministry of Education.” He says they agreed that the communication loopholes need to be fixed.
Fonseca affirmed that when it comes to the income tax returns owed to some teachers, it is not a case of the Government not having the money to pay. He reiterated that they encountered a backlog dating back to 2015 when they came to power in November 2020, and so they hired additional staff and worked overtime to reduce the backlog. He notes that it has been brought up to 2021, and they are now working on 2022 and then 2023. He explained, “… and because of the new system that the Tax Services Department has in place, what they call IRIS – it’s an accounting program or computer system, you have to upload everything together … so they have to wait until they finish everything and then upload all that information for each year. So, it’s challenging.” In about 100 cases, the Minister says, teachers do not even have a Tax Identification Number (TIN) or it is inactive. He says this does not apply for Government schools. He affirmed that the Briceño Administration has had to find the hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay the backlogged returns, and by the time they have finished catching up, it could be in the millions.
In the case of increments, which the Union says have not been reinstated across the board, the Minister had said that some school managements have not forwarded the required appraisals for the teachers. Today, Fonseca said they believe this should be addressed in this month, and that generally, all parties believe the issues can be resolved within two months.
On the matter of teachers being required to work 30 more minutes, Fonseca reiterated that the new competency-based curriculum requires flexibility, but where schools want to introduce additional programs outside of the classroom, it has to be done in consultation with teachers who are willing to volunteer extra time.
Speaking after Friday’s meeting, in his first interview since taking over the role of Acting National President of the BNTU, Jorge Mejia only shared that they had a “very informative and respectful meeting. We had timelines and we had slight agreements that we need to go back now to our membership to see if they are satisfied with the outcome of today’s meeting, and then from there on, we will inform you all of what would be our next step.” Asked if the tension has been diffused, Mejia said only the membership can say. Membership meetings with all branches were set for today, Monday, December 4. At press time, we had heard only of votes in three branches, and the word is that teachers are generally unhappy – with talks of a potential strike in coming weeks. We’ll provide the full update when that’s available.