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Roots Belizeans’ response to changes in Belize was slow

EditorialRoots Belizeans’ response to changes in Belize was slow

Much has changed on the Belizean landscape since Independence in 1981, some for the better. Looking at some positives in the post-independence Belize, there has been much improvement in road and bridge infrastructure; though the masses struggle to pay the bills, there are electricity, telecommunications, and water services available in most areas of the country now; and there are relatively well-paid jobs available for almost all educated Belizeans. One terribly unfortunate change is that we are no longer a peaceful country. Our people have lost respect for life, and there is no worse thing than that under the sun.

Using the old poverty measure, our poverty rate hovers between 40% and 50%, and it climbed well above 60% during the pandemic. There have been some economic gains since 2020, but for too many, their financial situation is dismal, a reality that makes people start questioning the benefit of democracy and start contemplating violent overthrow of the system.

Staying with the economy, in many cases the people who were supposed to win, Roots Belizeans, those Belizeans whose families were well-established here prior to self-government, got left behind. We are a country, all Belizeans are Belizeans, we must be happy for the successes of all, but when it is along racial/ethnic lines, which in many instances has been the case, when entire groups are being left behind, as a number have, then we have to be concerned. Religious zealotry has sparked many a war, but it is a fact that most splintering of countries are along racial/ethnic lines.

We are a uniquely blessed country, beautiful without equal for our racial/ethnic harmony. If we will keep it, we must work for it. It is critical that all of us, not just some of us, know how the system works. We must change what is necessary to be changed. Our political leaders must work to make cheap capital accessible to more of us who are entrepreneurial. We must adapt our way of doing business when it is prudent to do so.

For Belize to survive, our less successful groups must achieve economic salvation. Some believe that one reason why they haven’t is that they’ve been slow to adapt to the changing Belize. Sometime after independence a few members of the Mennonite group saw that most Belizeans couldn’t afford fine furniture, and started building and taking to market less finely finished furniture at reasonable prices. Roots Belizean cabinet makers, some of the finest in the world, would not lower their “finish” to compete, and their market share fell. It is a fact that cheaper furniture was a Godsend for the general populace, but it was no boon that many Roots Belizeans got displaced.

The grocery business was the domain of Roots Belizeans, until members of the Chinese group entered the marketplace. The Chinese grocers reportedly belonged to “cartels”; they bought their stock as a group, so they were able to buy cheaper and sell cheaper. The Chinese grocers also opened longer hours, early in the morning and late at night. Shops run by Chinese Belizeans also stocked up on a wide variety of goods, so when you entered one you could get everything you wanted at one stop. Roots Belizeans dropped out of the grocery business faster than they exited to the US after Hurricane Hattie.

The best that Roots Belizeans who sold sofa sets and appliances offered their customers, was a layaway plan. Through the layaway plan a household that needed a washing machine or a set of furniture made monthly payments at the store until they had a sizable credit or had completed payment of the full purchase price. Then along came Courts, and albeit at high interest rates, anyone who was able to show that they had a regular job could walk into the store, select the item they desired, and it was delivered to their home the same afternoon or the next day.

Roots Belizeans, sometimes because they couldn’t afford to compete, have been too slow to adjust to change. For the most part the winners are Belizeans, and anytime any Belizean wins we should be happy. But we have to be concerned, because Roots Belizeans have been left out. Too many of the success stories, for whatever reason or reasons, are along racial/ethnic lines.

Stevedores could have been offered what they should have had

If the management at the Port of Belize Ltd. (PBL) was respectful and empathetic, it would have offered the stevedores shares in the company when it asked the group to support its initiative to extract higher tariffs on cargo handled by the port. Mr. Mose Hyde, the president of the bargaining agent for the stevedores at the port, the Christian Workers Union (CWU), told Amandala that the CWU had been “approached by PBL to sign an agreement that stevedores supported the increase in the tariffs PBL charges to move containers”, and “in return, they [PBL] would do away with the ongoing litigation against CWU and some stevedores.” The CWU president said they declined the offer to join an agreement that would have resulted in “tariffs going up on the people of Belize”.

Re: PBL’s “ongoing litigation”, the port’s management has charged the CWU and the stevedores with staging an illegal strike in 2022, and the company also went to court and blocked an ex gratia payment the government had made to the stevedores as a form of compensation for what some argue was GoB’s “illegally” allowing the bulk of sugar shipments from Tower Hill in Orange Walk to bypass PBL for the Port of Big Creek-Toledo Enterprises Ltd.

On the matter of a tariff increase, the cost of almost everything has gone up, some enormously since 2020 brought the Covid-19 pandemic and a war started in Europe in 2021. What PBL earns and what PBL spends has not been open to public viewing, especially since it fell into receivership in 2012. It might be that the company is operating in the red. It could be that it is laughing all the way to the Belize Bank.

When the PUP, which claims to be the party of labor, privatized the port in 2002, the workers at the port should have gotten a huge chunk of the shares. The government and people had invested heavily in the asset, and immediately prior to it being privatized the government had injected many millions of dollars to improve it. The deal given to the private owner could have been called sweetheart. But there wasn’t anything too unusual about that, because governments, thinking long term, will give investors every opportunity to succeed.

Why did the party of “labor” not make the stevedores and workers who had built PBL, substantial shareholders? One answer to that is that the PUP of 1998-2003 lost its soul or direction. And why didn’t PBL offer shares when it needed the stevedores to collude on a tariff hike? Judging from the company’s history, one of the answers to that is that the mission of PBL is to break the stevedores. The matter is also about respect, a virtue the foreign “owners” of PBL have shown none of since the asset fell under their control.

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