PM says Union demands are irrational and will not be countenanced

Dean Barrow

PM Barrow says that the IMF is actually telling the government to retrench public officers, as is being done all over the region. And it’s more than that. Teachers and public servants have made additional demands, including health insurance and payments for so-called lost increments. The PM says those demands are irrational and will not be countenanced.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“And then you quarrel secondly about health insurance. You say government should fund a particular health insurance scheme for you at a cost of something like seven million dollars annually. My god man, we are trying to roll out NHI for the rest of the country. We are going to Corozal now. But that’s my point. We are not in a position to roll out NHI for the masses of the people; we are giving you all that we can in terms of your salary increases, but you still say to us that we are going to form a Rod of Correction against you because you don’t agree to pay seven million dollars a year for health insurance for us. Then they say there was a gentleman’s agreement made in 1995/1997 regarding lost increments. We can’t find any evidence of that gentleman’s agreement; they can’t provide us with any except their word. And while I don’t doubt it, how can you ask us on that basis to restore these so called lost increments? And then they say that even though we restored the increments that the last administration had frozen, we must go back and pay them for the increments that the last administration didn’t pay them when there was the increment freeze. I mean for whatever reasons, the last administration presumably couldn’t pay them that’s why there was the increment freeze. You are not saluting us for giving it back to you, you say no give wi back and go find weh dehn one neva pay wi and you pay wi now. Those are the issues which cause me to come to a point at which I said to them, I am sorry, the Collective Bargaining Agreement has to come to an end. You haven’t gotten everything that you asked for, but by god, you’ve gotten ninety percent. In a real world with a government having a responsibility to an entire country, with financings being what they are, for god’s sakes man, understand that we can do no more.”