Teachers “Hurting” Children by Demonstrating

At the start of today’s debate, Pickstock area representative and Foreign Affairs Minister Wilfred Elrington said he is not a fan of Thursday’s demonstration outside the National Assembly. But it is not necessarily because he disagrees with the intentions of the Belize National Teachers’ Union, at least according to him. Elrington instead contends that students are losing out on valuable classroom time as they prepare for exams – P.S.E. and CSEC. But he does concede that crime, at least in Belize, is tied to the issue of corruption, though he was careful not to throw his own government under the bus.

Wilfred Elrington

Wilfred Elrington, Area Rep., Pickstock

“This is going to bring me some heat, but I think I need to make mention of it. The P.S.E. results are atrocious. The amount of time that [the] Teachers’ Union spends demonstrating, [is] unacceptable. If your kids are failing and failing repeatedly, to my mind we have to think at some point about the children. Every time you take a demonstration, every time you walk out on the street, every time you leave the classroom, the children are hurting! And this is C.X.C. time, they are in the middle of C.X.C., the teachers walk out, because they have something with corruption? Madam Speaker, if you are paid to teach and don’t teach, what is that? You don’t know that? The fundamental thing – if you are being paid to teach and you can’t teach successfully, what is that? You are obtaining funds by false pretenses. We have got to be serious about our country and about our children, Madam Speaker, and we have got to call a spade a spade. I will say these things – I am not against the teachers. I started out my life as a teacher; I’m teaching right now. My wife is a teacher; she’s teaching right now. My brother – we have a teaching institution. It’s not about the teachers. I recently interviewed a young lady who won a prize for an article she wrote; and she said, “Look, we understand the teachers have an interest, but what about us the students, don’t we have a right?”

Cordel Hyde, Area Rep., Lake Independence

“Madam Speaker, what does this have to do with the Budget; the teachers weren’t marching yesterday because of corruption, they were marching because of crime, and they are filling a vacuum in the community. “

Laura Longsworth, Speaker of the House

“Point taken.”

Cordel Hyde

“That’s a really unfair attack on the teachers by the Member for Pickstock; get back to the Budget, sir.”

Laura Longsworth

“Minister?”

Wilfred Elrington

“Crime is caused by corruption, Madam Speaker; when you don’t have money to finance the activities of your society, you’re’ going to have crime. So there is a direct correlation between the two.”