BELIZE CITY, Wed. Nov. 17, 2021 — In 2015 the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital Workers Union (KHMHU) was formed after healthcare professionals at the national referral hospital were excluded from a salary increase awarded by the Barrow administration to government employees because they were not classified as public servants. A July 2015 meeting resulted in the formation of the union, which since that time has been led by outgoing president Lydia Alpuche-Blake, whose tenure is now coming to an end.

At the current time, elections to fill the post of president of the union are ongoing within the hospital, and three candidates are vying for leadership of the KHMHU and a seat on the board of governors of the hospital, a board that has recently come under heavy criticism from its own Minister of Health.

The three candidates are Andrew Baird, who served as vice-president of the union and has been a vocal advocate for improved conditions and added benefits for the hospital’s staff. Part of his agenda is to see the undone collective bargaining agreement completed in order to secure adequate benefits for the staff, he told local reporters.

Daniela Bodden is the only female candidate seeking to lead the union. Bodden, who has served as the KHMH’s nurse unit manager and recently was at the head of the Accident & Emergency unit, has worked at the hospital for over 23 years.

The third candidate is Romilio Castaneda, who has worked in the human resources department of the hospital for the past nine years. He was an active member of the union prior to stepping aside in 2020. He said that the staff asked him to resume his involvement in union activities, and he has decided to do so, despite having some personal differences with the union executive.

On Tuesday, while being interviewed by 7News, he called out the trustee of the Provident Fund for accepting a monthly stipend allegedly paid from that fund, which was set up as a means to finance retirement and benefits packages for workers. Castaneda alleges that an audit would reveal that no provision was present or amended to make such a payment to the trustee possible.

It is being reported that those payments were approved by the hospital’s board of governors to be paid to members of the planning group, but Castaneda believes that, if this is the case, the process through which the approval was issued was not transparent enough. According to him. no extraordinary agreement exists, so he is questioning if proper consent was given and if consultations were done.

“At the end of the day, this is my retirement package, my benefits. It’s like, who is watching the watchman?” he remarked in an interview with 7News.

At the end of the day, whoever wins these elections will be given a seat on the board of governors of the KHMH. Just recently, an amendment was made to legislation governing the composition of the KHMH board of governors to allow for the inclusion of a union representative on the board.

Outgoing president of the KHMHU, Lydia Alpuche-Blake, says however, that some points of the tripartite MOU signed in October of 2015 have still not been realized. She said that if some of these agreements had been met, the hospital would be in a better position, despite the current shortage of staff. She said that the document needs to be revisited, since some of the actions outlined in that document include the employees developing their own pay scale, and the establishment of a legal department and a collections and billing department.

This task will be now passed on to whoever is elected as new president of the union and subsequently takes a seat on the board of governors of the KHMH.