P.M. Says He Will Meet With B.N.T.U. as Part of Umbrella N.T.U.C.B.

Within a few hours of Luke Palacio’s statement, the Prime Minister responded. He wrote to the B.N.T.U. president saying that Palacio’s statement is a fig leaf. According to the Prime Minister, he has publicly issued several calls for a return to negotiations, including two days ago. He goes further to state that Palacio did not indicate, in his response following the September twenty-second meeting announcing the strike that the Union was willing to further engage after rejecting the majority of the positions Government put to them. In fact, the Prime Minister put the Union president on the hot seat. He believes that the Union did not want further engagement and that the decision to strike had been taken before even hearing Government’s position. But Barrow says Government remains ready to further discuss the good governance agenda and other issues and tells Palacio that there is a problem because the National Trade Union Congress of Belize has adopted the position that the good governance agenda is one that it had already taken up, and that it should now be synchronized and further progressed by the Congress. The Prime Minister has formally written to the N.T.U.C.B. to fix the earliest possible date for those negotiations. The PM believes that it would be counterproductive and time consuming for Government to try to reach agreement with each individual Union, especially when, he states, time is obviously of the essence.