Utilities Unions Meet with P.M. on Wide Range of Issues

Prime Minister of Belize Dean Barrow was kept busy with a back to back schedule of meetings with the three unions representing workers from the utility companies this morning and meeting with representatives of the Joint Negotiating Team of the Belize National Teachers’ Union, Public Service Union and Association of Public Service Senior Managers this afternoon. We spoke with the president of the National Trade Union Congress of Belize, Marvin Mora, who is also general secretary of one of the utilities’ unions, the Belize Energy Workers’ Union and was appointed spokesman today.

Marvin Mora, Spokesman for Utilities Unions

“We are here as three utility unions and I speak for them on their behalf. It was necessary because of the different national issues that we have been seeing in the forefront on the media and of course, the fact that we have the B.N.T.U. looking at some sort of industrial action…we felt that it was necessary to have this meeting with the Prime Minister. He was the one that approached our three utility unions and we discussed several issues. I think it was about ten or so issues that we addressed. That in essence was the reason why we felt that we needed to have this discussion with the Prime Minister.”

Marvin Mora

Reporter

“How did it go?”

Marvin Mora

“Well as usual, we got some answers to some of the things we wanted to know; we got updates on some of them. And we also believe that the Prime Minister got information as well that would be useful for him to address some of the issues that we tackled, because we dealt with issues of national important and issues that were primarily with our unions as well.”