BELIZE CITY, Mon. Mar. 21, 2022– Last Friday, the Senate passed the General Revenue Supplementary Appropriation Bill #4 of 2021 to approve the $1.5 million ex-gratia payment from the Government of Belize to the stevedores who are members of the Christian Workers Union. The payment, which was blocked by an interim order resulting from a lawsuit brought by Port of Belize Limited against its employees, the stevedores, was granted to those workers for hardships and losses suffered due to the privatization of PBL, and also to bring to a halt to a protest being staged earlier this year, according to an MOU signed by the government of Belize and the CWU.

Lead Opposition Senator, Hon. Michael Peyrefitte, in his presentation to the upper house on Friday, said that the government should never have paid out money to remedy a conflict between two private entities, although he did not acknowledge that the privatization of PBL was an action facilitated by the government (nor did he mention a memorandum of understanding that was brokered by a former prime minister and was violated under this current government, which led to the transfer of sugar-loading to Big Creek.)

“I am talking about government policy. I’m not talking about whether it came out of Contingency Fund or Consolidated Revenue Fund; I’m talking about policy. The policy of the government. Madam President, cannot be that they see a dispute and go in and put money into that dispute, especially when they do not have the authority to settle that dispute,” said Peyrefitte.

Without acknowledging the unique circumstances surrounding the ownership of PBL, and the key public function of the facility, as well as the crippling effects of a decade-long receivership which followed government’s involvement in a privatization of the facility, Senator Peyrefitte commented, “I’m not talking about the case at all. I’m talking about the government opening up the floodgates when it has a policy, so any two, if the teacher gets involved with some union or some other entity, the government will come and compensate again? It is the policy of the government providing resources and money to entities involved in disputes that does not concern government, and that government cannot fix.”

The President of the Senate, Hon. Carolyn Trench-Sandiford, made a repeated effort to ensure that Senator Peyrefitte focused his comments on the contents of the bill and did not discuss the ongoing legal battle between the parties.

In response to her reminders, Peyrefitte said, “I’ve not only been in the Senate since 2017, but I’m also an officer of the court. I fully appreciate not discussing matters that would somehow make my pronunciations or presentations be prejudicial to a court process. If the government was so sensitive about the pronouncements in parliament concerning this appropriation, then maybe they should not have brought it. Since they want to respect the court so much and respect the process so much, then delay this until the court has completed its process, if you really care. The government has no business paying out money to 1 of 2 parties in a private dispute.”

While the government side of the Senate did not make any notable remarks about the bill, the Senator for the unions, Hon. Elena Smith stated that while they support the payment, and consider the stevedores to be “more than deserving” of such a payment, in light of all that these workers will endure as a result of certain decisions made by GoB, they are calling on the government to abide by the Finance and Audit Reform Act (FARA).

“And while some may say that’s a lot, a huge amount, it may not be deserving, we believe that it is more than deserving because it will not cover what these stevedores will have to endure going forward. And so I listened, Madam President, just a bit to what was said in the House, and I know that there were concerns when the matter was raised of it was the government abiding by the Finance and Audit Reform Act. As unions that have always worked to ensure that government is accountable and that the government does what is right, despite the fact we support, we have to remind the government that it ought to ensure that it abides by these acts, and do things when they’re supposed to be done, and not have to come after the fact. I believe that as trade unions, the work that we have been doing — as I said, while we certainly approve, and we support, we have to make that reminder.” Senator Elena Smith said.

Last week, the BNTU issued a public statement in which it indicated that it would remove its accounts from Belize Bank (which is reportedly affiliated with the entity controlling the Port of Belize Ltd.) and urged sister unions to do the same—citing the lawsuit brought by PBL against the CWU’s negotiating team as an attack on all trade unions.

While this bill, which by all indications should have remedied the issue of non-parliamentary approval in the granting of the ex-gratia payment to the stevedores, was passed on Friday, the final determination of this case, and whether or not the cash will be released to the stevedores, will go back to the court in May. Then the court will hear PBL’s newly packaged arguments in its most recent efforts to prevent the disbursement of cash to the stevedores— whether or not the payment should have come from a contingency account and if it is in line with the FARA.

One of the CWU’s attorneys, Darrell Bradley, who is also a UDP senator, was not present during the debate on the appropriations bill. While the Opposition members of the Senate argued that the government should never have made the payment, saying the policy could create a culture of the government bailing out entities in private disputes, Bradley in an interview agreed that the case does highlight an issue of policy, but pointed out that the government and any government has the right to make key policy decisions.

As stated in the Friday, February 25 edition of the AMANDALA, there is a particular legal provision that enables the government to make urgent payments of sums of up to approximately $1 million, and thus the matter being contested now in court is whether the Contingencies Fund, from which that amount could have been paid, was activated.

That AMANDALA article explained, “…In October 2021 this administration established a Contingency Fund under the Finance and Audit Reform Act. That legislation governs payments that are urgent and unforeseen, for which no provision exists. Section 2 (3) of the Finance and Audit Reform Act amendment states, ‘Notwithstanding sub-rule (2), where an urgent and unforeseen need for expenditure has arisen and cannot without serious injury to the public interest be postponed until adequate provision can be made by the National Assembly, the Minister may by warrant, authorize the issue from the Fund of such sums as may be necessary.’ Section 4(a) and (b) mandates that the payment be authorized by the National Assembly but subsection (c) points out, ‘authorizations by warrant which have not been confirmed by the enactment of an Appropriation Act shall not at any time exceed in the aggregate an amount equivalent to ten per centum of the amount voted for the respective head of the approved expenditure estimates for the year, or the sum of one million dollars in the case of new goods or a new service’.”