by Kory Leslie (Freelance Writer)
BELIZE CITY, Mon. Nov. 28, 2022
Retired public workers who had endured a wage and increment freeze between 1995 and 1997 and who were compensated by the government with shares in what was then Belize Telecommunications Ltd., are lamenting the fact that they still haven’t received the dividends from those shares, which were placed in a trust, and they are intent on receiving a payout from that fund, which reportedly now totals a whopping $8 million.
The Manuel Esquivel administration, during the 1995-1997 period, had implemented the freeze on the salaries of all teachers and public officers—a move which reportedly saved the then GOB $7 million in expenses. Esquivel later compensated those hundreds of workers by allotting them 450,000 shares of BTL. The dividends generated by those shares, however, were placed in the control of the Public Sector Workers Trust—a source of frustration for those workers, many of whom are now retired, who claim they have still not received a payout. More than twenty years later in 2017, hundreds of the public workers who were affected, banded together to sue the leadership of the Public Sector Workers Trust (PSWT), who they said had failed to provide them their compensation.
As litigation took its course, the judiciary ordered that a new trust deed be created and that there he consultation between the GOB and the retired public workers to ensure that only those who were working for the government during the period of the pay freeze were compensated. The dividends which had matured to a sum of $8 million were to be used to finance projects that would benefit the designated public workers. (The workers had failed, however, to get the Court to order a direct payout of the funds.)
The Public Sector Workers Trust is claiming that since then it has headed initiatives aimed at bettering the lives of the assigned beneficiaries, such as their recent Food Assistance Project which seeks to provide groceries and food supplies at a maximum value of $150 to all beneficiaries of the fund. However, the 5,887 retired public officers who are entitled to these benefits are not satisfied.
On Monday, a relatively new advocacy group called the Association of Beneficiaries and Retired Public Officers (ABRPO) called upon the government via press release to take decisive action against the failure to issue a payout of the funds to the public workers. In their release, ABRPO, which was reportedly established in 2019, stated that the Supreme Court ruling of 2017 which indicated that the dividends were to be used to alleviate the hardships caused by the 1995-97 salary/increment freeze has yet to be honored. ABRPO asserts that instead, a “protracted state of litigation, failed mediation, and managerial inertia ensued.”
The association also claims that the trust is being used for other purposes that do not serve the beneficiaries. A statement from the association asserts that “At this time, twenty-seven years later, some $8 million has accrued by way of BTL dividend payments, deposited into the account of an agreed Public Sector Workers’ Trust Fund established in 2014 for which the Unions were the responsible Settlor. Beneficiaries of the Trust became concerned about decisions taken by the Board of Trustees of the PSWT, directed by the Unions, which engaged in spending that did not benefit those public sector workers who were entitled to do so.”
Further, the ABRPO stated that due to a failed attempt to have the 2017 ruling varied to allow a payout of funds to beneficiaries (and) the funding of projects, and the replacement of the Board of Trustees of the PSWT to obtain better representation for beneficiaries, the situation has worsened. An appeal was submitted; however the Association feels it has been “confounded because the written judgment may not have been signed off on by the presiding judge who has since demitted office, and because of the unavailability of a transcript.”
The impasse has apparently resulted in a number of retired workers who were to have benefited from the fund passing away before receiving the benefits to which they were entitled, which makes the matter time-sensitive. The association’s press release stated, “ABRPO has written the Prime Minister and the Attorney General requesting the government’s intervention. A growing number of beneficiaries are passing away without the benefit of their entitlement. It has drawn attention to the abject incompetence and failure of the PSWT Board of Trustees to ensure that beneficiaries’ needs are satisfactorily attended to.”
In closing, the ABRPO, which is headed by president Hubert Enriquez, also expressed their support of the call by public sector workers for the early restoration of their increments and compensation for monetary loss caused by the GOB’s 2020 salary increment freeze.
7News stated in its newscast last night that Dr. Philip Castillo, one of the trustees of the Public Sector Workers Trust, has refuted some of the claims made by the ABRPO and stated that “the Trust was sued – not once – but twice and that the second lawsuit is still awaiting a full hearing before the Court of Appeal. He asserted that the Association is attempting to challenge the outcomes of one of the court cases and that if they wanted to do that, they needed to file an appeal against the judgment.”
According to 7News, Castillo also claimed that “the Trust has been engaging in a health project to look after the medical needs of those retired beneficiaries.”