PM Briceño is Open to Dialogue with B.C.C.I.

Also weighing on the much-debated wage cut is the Belize Chamber and Commerce and Industry.  The Chamber wrote to Prime Minister John Briceño and shared concerns about whether or not G.O.B. should execute a public sector wage cut.  In the letter, the Chamber recommends that if the government decides to implement a wage cut, they should consider how to ensure that those on lower pay scales are equally affected as those at the higher scales. Other recommendations are for the government to insulate essential frontline workers from any such cut, institute a hiring freeze and commence or finalize a thorough payroll audit.  We asked PM Briceño about the Chamber’s recommendations.

John Briceño

Prime Minister John Briceño

“We are open to look at every idea, all the recommendations that they are doing. We have Minister Coye and his team in the Ministry of Finance taking a look at all of them but the reality is that we have this crisis in front of us. The U.D.P. left us with a five hundred million dollar deficit and by the time you institute some of these things you won’t see the effect until months to come or over a year from now and the crisis is here and it is something that has to be addressed. I have been saying it over and over that we come in good faith with the private sector and the public sector – telling them ok – let’s sit down and chew ideas and see how we can address this huge financial crisis that the U.D.P. left on the hands of the Belizean people. And it is not something that we are doing with any sense of being happy to say let’s blame the U.D.P. – we do it with a heavy heart because it is something that will require all of us to do some form of sacrifice.”