No To Contributory Pension Scheme for Current Public Servants Says Unions

Dean Flowers

And, the joint union also spoke out against the Briceño Administrations’ proposed pension reform. Flowers revealed that the administration’s plan for reform is establishing a contributory pension scheme that will require a contribution from public servants. According to Flowers, the government’s proposed pension agenda has overshadowed their demands for increments to be unfrozen. In this light, the joint union has taken the position that no active public servant will pay into any new pension scheme. Here is how Flowers puts it.

Dean Flowers, President, P.S.U.

“The government will say to you that the pension bill currently stands at a hundred million dollars. This has not been substantiated, neither by an audit, because the lord knows that every year there is some, a couple hundred, thousands, of dollars missing from the treasury through fraudulent means by our very own public officers, which means if this is what they are paying out, it could very much include fraudulent transactions. In addition we have to ask the questions, why you would join pension reform to increments. It is two different things. What Belize needs is tax reform as the current tax regime is burdensome on us at twenty-five percent. What has us here is the poor fiscal management since 1981 by the PUP. The joint union position in closing that no public officer currently employed in the public service is to continue to any pension fund. No public officer currently in the public service is to contribute to any pension fund, no police officer, no coastguard, no teacher, no public officer will contribute to any contributory public funds and the ministry of finance needs to get that in their head. So, whenever it is that they rush the establishment of this pension scheme, which the prime minister informed that he wants to roll out by April first 2023, it must be aimed and geared by those who come ot the service there after.”