P.U.P. Can’t Support Vesting Bill with Employees on the Chopping Block

Also on the agenda today was the vesting bill, which will facilitate the sale of First Caribbean International Bank assets to Heritage Bank. While the transaction is a private one between two sizable players in the industry, it’s gotten some bad press because at least sixty employees of FCIB will get the axe when that bank leaves town at the end of October. Because of that scenario, Leader of the Opposition, Francis Fonseca, says that the P.U.P. cannot support the vesting bill.

Francis Fonseca

Francis Fonseca, Opposition Leader

“It is our understanding that there are some sixty employees who—to use their words—find themselves in limbo. They find themselves facing growing uncertainty about their current status and their futures. And I think we all can appreciate what they are going through, Mister Speaker. These are real men and women with families, with obligations, with responsibilities so we, those of us who sit in this chamber, have a special duty and obligation to these workers and their families to ensure that they are treated fairly and justly and that before we pass this Vesting Bill, we are the very least get an absolute undertaking from the honourable Prime Minister, who is the Minister of Finance, that this First Caribbean International Bank, Belize Branch, has fulfilled each and every of its legal obligations to these employees, Mister Speaker…including but not limited to negotiation and conclusion of what they have terms their exit packages.”