Luke Palacio Insists Ministry Has No Authority Over Deductions

Luke Palacio

The total monthly salary is to be divided by the number of days in the month – thirty-one; then multiplied by the total number of days the teacher is out on strike. But do they have the authority to withhold the payments for teachers’ salaries? This afternoon, we spoke with the National President of the Belize National Teachers’ Union, Luke Palacio, following up on Wednesday’s wider press briefing. He is adamant that the Ministry is overstepping its boundaries and earning unneeded ire from the teaching community.

Luke Palacio, National President, B.N.T.U.

“The rule of the Chief Justice which the Ministry of Education continues to conveniently quote certain sections; the section that we rely on; that we have been advised upon is that it is not the prerogative, it is not the purview of the ministry to instruct management to deduct that amount of money. The money should have been paid to the managements in accordance with the education and training act where there is an agreement that the government will transfer sums of monies to management for them to pay salaries. We continue to see the efforts of these people in the Ministry of Education that we can only describe as being vindictive as trying to be high handed when they send out these types of memo with the content. We believe that they too, for the most part as employees of the government, have forgotten where they come from.”