Photo: (l-r) Kimberly Lopez and Janelle Cacho – Primary School Teacher
Over 130+ teachers have not been paid
in months
BELIZE CITY, Thurs. Oct. 3, 2024
On Wednesday morning, the Belize National Teachers’ Union (BNTU) dropped the bombshell news that over 130 teachers around the country have not been receiving their salaries on time. At an impromptu press conference later in the day, BNTU National President, Nadia Martin-Caliz revealed that the 130 figure is only for the cases they have learned of so far, but that more teachers are reporting that they have been impacted. In some cases, teachers have not been paid for months.
As a result of the irregular salaries, Janelle Cacho, a primary school teacher in Cotton Tree Village, Cayo, is staring down foreclosure; while another has had to be dipping into savings and relying on her husband and anyone else in her circle who can help. Martin-Caliz shared that one teacher had a breakdown when she was informed Wednesday that her utilities were being disconnected. Others, she says, have been having breakdowns since May and all through the summer.
Martin-Caliz has the suspicion that someone is using the system to attack the BNTU. That’s because with teachers not being paid, the Union does not receive its monthly dues and monthly repayments of micro-loans from their members. According to Martin-Caliz, on July 22nd, they reached an agreement with Minister Francis Fonseca which was communicated to all school managements on July 25. The memorandum stated that some teachers would [not] fulfill their 120 CPD hours requirement until August 31, 2024, and that managements should refrain from “initiating any salary stoppage submissions without prior consultation with the Chief Education Officer …” However, in this case, Martin-Caliz said no notification was received that any teacher would be removed from the SMARTSTREAM system. She further explained that for teachers to be struck off, “someone had to manually go in and remove them.” She questioned, “So, who gave the order? … Who disobeyed the agreement we made with Minister Fonseca? Because he was in the meeting with us.” That apart, the BNTU says they were told that teachers are not automatically removed from the system once their license expires. While Martin-Caliz says they have teething pains every year that last about a month to be sorted out, in this case, a majority of the teachers being affected are not new teachers.
For those who may be wondering if the matter is purely straightforward or more complex, it appears that there is a licensing issue and continuous professional development (CPD) hours requirement at play. Martin-Caliz explained that teachers who have qualified for a teaching license applied for the document, but did not receive the physical copy in time and so they had to leave the classroom. As a result, they lost salary. Martin-Caliz said they had been at the Ministry dealing with the matter in July and August of this year, and therefore were surprised that the salary for some teachers was not deposited for September.
Kimberly Lopez, a teacher at All Saints Anglican Primary School, said she has not been paid since May of this year. She explained that before her teaching license expired, she was communicating with the Ministry to confirm how many CPD hours were logged for her, only to learn that she was being shorted. Lopez shared that she had to dig into boxes of documents to find the proof that she had completed the required hours. When she finally obtained her license in July, she expected her salary would have been deposited but it wasn’t. In these five months, Lopez says she’s been getting money “from all over, my spouse, savings.” Then, like all other teachers, she had to find the money to prepare her classroom for the start of the new school year in September. She reported, “If you don’t have your classroom ready, and then the parents go in, they don’t want to see no classroom that’s empty or the students go in their classrooms empty. And they don’t even know what you’re going through, so you have to put a whole character there, and go into your classroom like nothing is happening when behind doors you’re suffering.”
Speaking about the distress, Teacher Cacho from Cotton Tree remarked, “You have to function as a teacher; but then as a person, how are you supposed to be functioning to do your job if all of these things are hindering you? It has been a really, really major setback and inconvenience for me over these past few months, and I am glad I’m still here; but I think the Ministry has to do better.”
The Ministry of Education late this afternoon issued an update informing that it will conduct an off-cycle payment run for a total of 122 teachers so they can be paid by the evening of Friday, October 4. The Ministry explained that from a list of 99 impacted teachers forwarded by the BNTU, 12 names were duplicated, leaving 87 cases to address. Of those, the Ministry says 44 are included in the off-cycle payment run and out of the other 43, nine already received their September salaries. The Ministry further reports that 3 are paid under another system given that they are secondary and tertiary level teachers. Payments for another four are to be processed by the next payment cycle at the end of this month.
The Ministry has committed to work with the school managements to resolve payments relating to the remaining 27 teachers so they can receive their salaries later this month.
The Ministry wrote in its statement that it acknowledges “that the current salary processing system is antiquated and prone to delays, especially where paperwork is incomplete or submitted late. We understand the frustration that these delays have caused for the affected teachers, and we are committed to working closely with the BNTU and all stakeholders to address these challenges swiftly.” It also thanked teachers for their patience and understanding.
Notably, during the press conference, Martin-Caliz also reported that she just concluded a tour of schools across the country and decried the deplorable condition in some. She indicated, “Our teachers are working in “rat bat” infested classrooms, termites, the drinking water, or the water that they are supposed to drink is not healthy. You full that bottle and leave it there, you see all the sediments at the bottom. Our teachers are trying their very best to educate the children of this country.” She added, “They suffer to educate these children, to fix these classrooms, and at the end of the month, no salary?” Martin-Caliz has declared that “the BNTU will not take this lightly come October 2024! If we have to muster, we will muster!”