We’re not so far removed from nightly curfews and a month of complete lockdown, not so far removed from an economy in such a dire state that in 2021 the government felt it had to ask its employees to accept a 10% cut in salaries on top of an increments freeze that was implemented in 2020.
The citrus industry, once our country’s top foreign exchange earner, is earning less than 50% of what it did in its best days. The farmed shrimp industry, which climbed to our number one foreign exchange earner briefly a couple decades ago, has been struggling so much since 2015 that many of the shrimp farms have closed down. A massive increase in fertilizer costs and the Sigatoka disease have severely cut into farmers’ profits in the banana industry. Oil from the wells in Spanish Lookout remain a trickle, and in 2022 overnight tourist arrivals was a little more than 70% of what it was in 2019.
Our country’s earnings, which have never been great, are not yet back to where it was prior to the pandemic, but the weight of our foreign debt has been vastly reduced, thanks to the negotiations that saw us slip the noose of the onerous so-called Super Bond for a far more benign Blue Bond, and the largesse of the Bolivarian Republic, Venezuela, which has been kind enough to wipe off the books a large part of a debt we owe them for their oil. The debt relief has helped offset the sputtering of our main economic engines, with the little fiscal space we gained allowing our government to operate much as it would in normal times.
The GoB has made good on a promise to raise the minimum wage, from $3.30 per hour to $5. The judges needed a raise on their already considerable earnings because greener pastures abroad beckoned; our country couldn’t afford to lose them, so their demands were met. In the midst of this, Prime Minister John Briceño decided that he has been subsidizing Belize’s economy for too long. When the PUP took over the reins of government in 2020, the national coffers were dry, and to “help out,” the PM and a few of his colleagues used their private vehicles to do government business. The PM recently decided he will continue to sacrifice his private vehicle for the public good, but he needed to triple his monthly allowance for its upkeep.
Struggling GoB employees can’t help but wonder why he didn’t continue helping us out. After all, he is a very successful businessman. But it is his right. We can’t demand that our leaders be like Fidel Castro and José Mujica. Leadership is very demanding. It is very important for leaders to be comfortable, and people generally don’t grudge them their fat salaries and perks, if the material world is what makes them happy.
The salaries of GoB’s employees have been restored to where they were prior to the pandemic. The GoB has patted itself on the back for reinstituting salaries after one year. Now the employees of the government are calling for their increments. The leadership of the public sector unions have listened to the GoB crowing about its economic achievements, and the recent sharing of plums at the top is suggestive that money deh. They say there’d be more money in the national treasury if we chucked unnecessary CEOs out of the system, if the tax structure didn’t favor the wealthy, and if the GoB collected monies owed by rich tax evaders; and they’d have more money in their pockets if pressure was brought on merchants whom they accuse of “price gouging” on items they purchase with their fixed salaries. They would have made the call for their increments anyway, because we are living in haad times.
Over the years public employees have not been receiving salary increases commensurate with the rising cost of living. And then came the pandemic, and they were forced to accept an increments freeze, and then the majority of them had to swallow a 10% salary cut, and then came a war in Europe that, coupled with the pandemic, has led to inflation which we have not seen since our money was devalued in 1949. Two Belize dollars still buy one US dollar, but it is estimated that the purchasing power of our dollar has gone down 30% in just three years.
The minimum wage increase has hit GoB’s employees in the purse. Many of them hire “help” as they go about the daily 8-to-5 in the service of the government and people. In the long term, the minimum wage increase will work out for all. In the short term, the merchants will see much of the money they pay out to their employees rolling back in, but for the government’s employees, it’s a direct hit on their already strained-past-the-limit fixed finances.
If there is benefit in comparison, in our present economy GoB’s employees are a privileged class with their sure 15th and ending. Only eternal hope keeps our non-merchant private sector — our small farmers, fishermen, taxi operators, and food vendors — going.
The PM says he has explained to GoB’s employees the unsustainability of the status quo. While GoB’s employees are demanding that their increments be returned, the GoB is focused on the present non-contributory pension scheme, which it says urgently needs to be reformed because the country cannot afford it. While the PSU president, Mr. Dean Flowers declared that no one presently employed by GoB should pay into a contributory pension scheme, his union offered no protection to “those who come to the service thereafter.” The BNTU president, Hon. Senator Elena Smith, has called on the government to complete a Collective Bargaining Agreement with the BNTU that has stagnated for almost 15 years, and to address a shortfall in pension payments to teachers in church-run schools, because the churches have said they don’t have the money. It never rains but it pours. The Nurse’s Association is also making demands of the GoB.
Re: the shortfall for teachers, no doubt the government and people will have to step in where the churches have lapsed. But the GoB is leveraging everything it can find in its initiative to reform the pension scheme.
It’s all setting up for a major battle. It should be only about the numbers, but too much has gone on in our country over the past couple decades. GoB’s employees want our shortcomings to be addressed. They are fed up after decades of suffering. GoB wants the numbers to be corrected. It has to factor in that the sins of the past are carried forward if there hasn’t been atonement. Our present leaders can’t get away with saying they’ve done no wrong, even if they’ve done no wrong
There are tough decisions with short-term and long-term ramifications that Belize has to make. The strategic steps we make will have great impact on our economic future. Fifty percent of Belizeans have never partaken of the wealth untold in our country, and that is wholly unacceptable. The nation expects that when the GoB and its employees unlock horns, it will be that what they agree on is best for Belize.